Incident at Twenty-Mile Page 6

  "It isn't a question of good or bad. It's a question of being whole or crippled. Once Twenty-Mile started dying, only the lame and the confused stayed behind. Everyone got out who still had a modicum of health, or hope, or heart-"

  "And that's just the H's," Coots said with annoyance. He was used to B. J.'s misanthropic outpourings, but he didn't think he should parade his unattractive bile before a stranger.

  "But you're right about the Kanes, Matthew," B. J. Stone continued, the bit well between his teeth. "Kane's not a bad man, just weak. He's let bitterness and self-pity gnaw at him until it's eaten half way through his heart. And his daughter…? Well, I feel sorry for her, growing up in Twenty-Mile. But she's got spunk and she'll find a way to get out one of these days, I'm sure of it. As for the rest of us…" He flipped his hand, as though to clear the air of such rubbish. "You've met the Bjorkvists. Now there's a fine upstanding family for you! A grasping woman who wrings money out of the miners. And her hulking bully of a husband! Oh and don't forget that simple-minded son with a slop-bucket for a mind. And Kersti, a poor pack animal cruelly short-changed by both Nature, who made her ugly, and Fate, who dumped her in this lost chunk of Nowhere. One might feel sorry for Kersti, if it weren't that she's sure to produce a litter of her own, a litter bearing her parents' lethal blend of cupidity and stupidity."

  "And that's just the 'iditiy's,' " Coots muttered, looking out to the northwest, where the low angle of the setting sun was picking out textures on the hillsides.

  "The Bjorkvists left Sweden with a sect that found the Loo-tern church too forgiving and sinner-coddling for their taste, so they set up a religious colony back in some Iowa or another. But they threw the Bjorkvists out. Imagine being rejected from a fundamentalist sect! How low on the intellectual ladder can you get?"

  "What did they get thrown out for?"

  "Who knows? The mind boggles! The imagination staggers! The stomach turns! The skin crawls! And as for Professor Murphy, our tonsorial entrepreneur! He arrived in town trailing rumors behind him like the stench of his potent bay rum."

  "What sort of rumors?"

  "The vilest you can imagine, boy. The only reason he stays here is because there are people in the lowlands who would shoot him and leave him to rot in the gutter if they ever came across him."

  "Lordy!"

  "And as for the denizens of the Traveller's Welcome? Well, you've met Jeff Calder, the only obvious cripple among us. And Delanny, our theatrical whoremaster? Coughing up his lungs bit by bit, but still playing the role of the mysterious, tragic figure to the hilt. Any man with real dignity would put a quick end to a life that's no longer worth living. But he clings to every second, hoping the dry mountain air will prolong his life. But it doesn't! It only prolongs his dying! I'll give him this much, though: he isn't a pimp. He contents himself with the profit from the liquor, and he makes his girls salt away most of their wages of sin in the bank down in Destiny. And speaking of the girls, have you seen them?"

  "No, sir, not yet. But I suppose I'll meet them tomorrow morning, when I help make breakfast."

  "Well, you've got a treat in store. There's a toothsome trio of hetairai for you! Frenchy, the black one, has a bumpy scar running from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth. It was done by a broken bottle, and it's a real heart-stopper, partly because black skin scars worse than white, and partly because of the surprise you get when she turns her head. From one side, she looks just fine, but then she turns her head and-look out! Grab ahold of something! Then there's Chinky, the little Chinese. Delanny bought her from a couple of Chinese prospectors who'd been sharing her but needed a grubstake. Delanny offered to let her go, but she's backward and timid and can't speak more than a dozen words of English, so where could she go? How could she keep herself? And Queeny? Well, poor old Queeny'll never see the sunny side of fifty again. Maybe not of sixty. Half of her sags and the rest jiggles. The red dye she pours into her hair never quite hides the white roots. And the whiskey she pours into her gut never quite hides the fact that she looks like someone's grandmother who got into the elderberry wine and went wild with her makeup box. So the girls stay on in Twenty-Mile because there's nowhere else they could find work. You have to feel sorry for them. And they're not the worst of our citizens! Not by a long chalk! The sorriest sack of garbage in this town is 'Reverend' Leroy Hibbard! Now there's a reason to wish Noah's boat had gone down with all hands! He's the most contemptible-"

  "Well, then!" Coots said, standing up and dusting his palms against the seat of his trousers. "I guess that'll do us for today! You must be feeling better, now that you got all that shit out of your system." He turned to Matthew. "These fits of cussedness come over him ever now and again. Christ only knows why I put up with him, and He ain't telling."

  Matthew sensed that the best way to play it was to imitate Coots's joshing tone. "So everyone in Twenty-Mile is low and vile and contemptible, is that it, Mr. Stone?" He grinned and glanced at Coots for approval.

  "That is exactly it."

  "What about you and Mr. Coots? Are you low and contemptible too?"

  "Most people in town think we're the lowest of the low and the vilest of the vile. And in Coots's case, there's some foundation for that opinion. You've tasted his coffee? There's nothing lower and viler than that, and you can experto crede, as Virgil said."

  "And you, Mr. Stone?" Matthew said, grinning ever more broadly. "Are you low and vile too?"

  "Certainly not! I'm telling the tales, and the gossip always comes off cleaner and nobler than his victims. Well, I can't sit around all evening flaying my fellow creatures for your amusement. It's supper time, and I better get something burning in a pan or Coots'll get nasty and evil and vile and low and all the rest of it." He started toward the kitchen, then stopped. "You hungry, boy?"

  "I'm just about always hungry, sir. But I'll be eating with the Kanes…. At least, I think I will."

  "Suit yourself." And he left.

  Coots had sat down again and was watching the far horizon, his mind seemingly adrift. "Sorry about that," he said, half to himself. "Ever now and again he gets these fits of cussedness, and he starts bad-mouthing everybody and his uncle."

  "Oh, I know the people in Twenty-Mile aren't as bad as he made them out to be. He was just funnin' and exaggerating."

  Coots blinked away whatever it was he had been turning over in his mind and settled his eyes on Matthew with a slightly irritated frown. "No, he wasn't funnin'." He pushed himself up. "And he wasn't exaggerating neither."

  THE SUN HAD SETTLED onto the westward hills, red and molten on the bottom; and evening was spreading in from the northeast, where long slabs of cloud turned pink, then briefly mauve, before dulling into gray.

  Within the Mercantile, Mr. Kane looked up from his account ledger, set his pen down, and reached his two forefingers in under his glasses to rub the red dents on the sides of his nose. "Is he still there?" he asked in a weary voice.

  Ruth Lillian leaned back from the counter to look out the window, though she knew perfectly well he was still there, for she had glanced sideways from the pages of the Singer pattern book half a dozen times and seen, tangled in her eyelashes, the profile of Matthew sitting on the wooden steps, his pack beside him and the heavy old shotgun across his knees. He was looking out past the rim of Twenty-Mile's bowl toward the last sunset glow behind the foothills. In fact, he wasn't so much looking at the dimming foothills as letting his eyes rest on them while his mind wandered elsewhere. Sensing at the nape of his neck that someone was watching him, he smiled up at Ruth Lillian, then he settled back against his pack, patient and immovable.

  Ruth Lillian turned back into the darkening store. "He's still there, Pa. Just sitting and waiting. Why don't you light your lamp?"

  He grunted negatively.

  "You're going to hurt your eyes, doing those accounts in the dark."

  "I don't need to be told when I can see and when I can't!" But it wasn't her solicitude that irritated him. "That boy's
been sitting out there for an hour!"

  "Nearer to two."

  "Well, he is not going to push me into anything, not if he sits there all night long."

  "I don't think he's trying to push you into anything, Pa. He said he was going to give us time to talk things over, and that's just what he's doing. Waiting for your decision."

  "My decision is we don't need him. I'm not going to waste half the day thinking up make-work chores for some drifter, then waste the rest of it keeping an eye on him to make sure he does things right-things that don't really need doing in the first place!"

  "Then call him in and tell him. It's not right, just letting him sit out there in the dark."

  "Oh, so now it's my fault he hung around all day, instead of making his way back down to Destiny? I suppose you think I should feed him. And maybe put him up for the night as well?"

  "Nobody said anything about feeding him or putting him up. But you might have the common decency not to leave him sitting there, hoping against hope that he might get some work from us."

  "Why doesn't he go over to the Bjorkvists'?"

  "Because he doesn't have any money, Pa! And you know Mrs. Bjorkvist ain't going to put him up for free."

  "And all this is my fault, too, I suppose?"

  "No one said it's your fault."

  "You're trying to make it sound like it's my fault."

  "I ain't trying to make it sound…! All right then! I'll tell him we don't need him." She crossed to the door and snatched it open, setting the spring bell to jangling wildly. "Matthew? Will you come in here for a minute?"

  Leaving his pack and gun behind, the boy entered the store, his bearing at once humble and eager. "Evening, Ruth Lillian," he greeted, taking off his hat. "Evening, Mr. Kane. I been watching the sun set. Lordy, it sure is beautiful up here! And to think you have this show every evening."

  "Oh, we get more'n our share of rain and storms, don't worry," Ruth Lillian said. "Sometimes the first snow comes as soon as October. And when blizzards choke up the railroad track, we're cut off for a couple of weeks at a time. And sometimes we get a rip-snorter. That's really something."

  "A rip-snorter?"

  "That's what people around here call the storms that come raging down almost every fall and do their best to scrape us off this mountain."

  "Nobody calls them rip-snorters but you," Mr. Kane said grumpily.

  "They're something, those rip-snorters," she told Matthew. "First the air starts humming with electricity, then in she comes! With wind ripping from every direction at once, and rain slashing down, and thunder crashing and shaking the mountain, and lightning cracking and smelling like the air was frying! I love it!"

  "I know I'll love it too. I really like this place, what with the sunsets and the nice people. Except for the Bjorkvists, everybody's pitched in to help me out."

  Ruth Lillian cast a glance at her father, who cleared his throat and said, "Look here, boy. I've thought it over, but I'm afraid I can't use any help."

  "None at all, sir?"

  "No, none at all."

  "… I see…"

  Matthew allowed the silence to lie there until Mr. Kane felt impelled to say, "As I was telling Ruth Lillian, all right, maybe there are a few things that need fixing and sorting out. But I simply don't have the time to work out what needs doing, and when, and how. So that's that." As though to punctuate his decision, he scratched a lucifer to light his lamp, but the match head broke off and flew hissing onto the pile of receipts he was copying into his account book. He jumped up and slapped it out with his hand, giving himself a painful little blister. "I can't afford any help! That's all there is to it!"

  "I understand, sir." Matthew nodded gravely, his brow knit, as though hefting Mr. Kane's problem in his mind. Then: "What would you say to me looking things over and deciding for myself what jobs need being done? That way you wouldn't have to waste time working up a list or anything, and you could just come look at the work when it's finished and tell me if it's good enough. And as for pay…? Well, I'll just do the job, and you pay me whatever you think it's worth. And if you don't have the money to hand, well, you can pay me when you do. Now, I honestly can't think how I can offer any fairer than that, sir, but if you've got some other way we could work things out, it'd be just fine with me." He waited respectfully to hear what this other way might be.

  Ruth Lillian donned her most concerned expression and waited too, watching her father with a glint of amusement in her eyes.

  Mr. Kane touched his blistered finger with the tip of his tongue and blew the wet spot cool. Then he drew a long sigh.

  He later realized, with some irritation, he never did hire Matthew. Not in so many words, anyway. He just growled and returned to his accounts. Ruth Lillian scratched a lucifer and lit his lamp for him, and Matthew asked her if they had any drippings up in the kitchen, because there was nothing better for a burn than drippings.

  Although, of course, butter would do, too.

  In a pinch.

  AFTER SHARING THE KANES' supper, Matthew insisted on helping Ruth Lillian wash the dishes. He turned from the draining board to explain to Mr. Kane that he always used to do the dishes for his ma when she was tired or when she'd been… well, she wasn't feeling well.

  Later, as they sat around the table, coffee mugs between their hands and the kerosene lamp in the middle, flat-lighting their faces and throwing their shadows against the walls behind them, Matthew asked Mr. Kane intelligent, insightful questions about the running of a general store. The thoughtful tone of his questions and the rapt expression with which he absorbed the responses drew the best out of Mr. Kane who, before bitterness had soured him, used to like nothing better than talking late into the night with cronies. Occasionally, Matthew glanced across at Ruth Lillian, who was only half listening to her father's rambling, excessively detailed explanations. Her eyelashes were lowered, and she was adrift in some daydream. The lamplight burnished her high-piled cupric hair, and Matthew knew there was no more beautiful girl in the world. This was the sort of girl the Ringo Kid helped when she was in trouble, and he never asked anything in return, because he was only doing what any real man would do in the circumstances.

  That night, Matthew slept on the counter down in the shop, beneath a four-tail Hudson Bay blanket Ruth Lillian had taken out of stock. He woke twice during the night, intensely aware of the girl sleeping above him.

  LONG BEFORE MR. KANE started making breakfast for himself and his daughter, Matthew had folded up his Hudson Bay blanket and returned it to the shelf, then slipped out to explore the abandoned buildings of the sleeping town before going to the Traveller's Welcome, where he found Jeff Calder stumping around the kitchen. He had started early to make breakfast for the girls and Mr. Delanny to show that he didn't need no help! Matthew was careful not to get under his taskmaster's feet, while at the same time being cheerfully helpful. Rustling up breakfast shouldn't have been a complicated matter, for it consisted simply of coffee, bacon, and canned beans; but the first boiled over, the second burnt, and the third had to be served tepid because in all the years Jeff Calder had been battling the smoky Dayton Imperial stove, he had never got the hang of the goddamned-useless-sonofabitchin' thing! Matthew knew how to stop the stove from smoking by adjusting the air intake, because he had often had to cook when his ma wasn't up to it, but he also knew that it would be a mistake to show Jeff Calder up, so he just watched the old soldier fuss and fidget and cuss. Every once in a while Matthew would mutter things like "So that's where you keep the mugs," or "Yes, sir, I think I got the idea," or "I'll remember that, so's I'll be able to get everything tomorrow morning."

  Following Jeff Calder's curt instructions, Matthew set up three places for the girls out in the barroom, and one place at a distant table for Mr. Delanny, who was strict about maintaining his distance and dignity. He experienced again the clogging thickness that the stench of whiskey always brought to the back of his throat, but this was soon supplanted by the smell of charred
bacon, which drew the girls down early, and Matthew hurried to carry their breakfasts in, saying a bright good-morning to each in turn as he set down her plate of beans and bacon. They hadn't bothered to do more than put on wraps and flick a little water into their puffy, wear-stained eyes.

  "Well, look what the cat drug in," Queeny snorted with a husky laugh that caught in her throat and made her cough wetly over her first cigar of the day.

  "I'm the new help," Matthew said, snatching his eyes from Queeny's half-revealed breasts so quickly that he inadvertently settled them on Frenchy's-oops-then away quickly to her face, but he didn't want her to think he was staring at the rumpled scar that tugged her right eye toward the corner of her mouth, so he lowered his eyes to her breasts again-oops-then glanced quickly over at Chinky, whose breasts (thank God) were small and didn't bulge out of her loose wrap. Having followed this maladroit display with her slippery yellow eyes, Frenchy sniffed and shook her head dismissively.

  "Well?" Queeny demanded. "You going to bring us our coffee, or are you just going to stare at our udders?"

  Matthew swallowed but maintained his aplomb. "Coffee coming right up, ma'am." He stopped at the door and turned back with a boyish grin. "But such fine udders are a terrible distraction to a poor country boy."

  Queeny hooted with laughter, Frenchy smiled, and Chinky wondered what they were talking about.

  Having come down to the barroom during this exchange, Mr. Delanny shook his head and smiled thinly. A natural con, that boy.

  After he finished washing the dishes and sweeping the kitchen, Matthew found Jeff Calder fiddling around behind the bar and Mr. Delanny setting out a hand of solitaire. "Well, I guess that's about all, Mr. Calder. Thanks for showing me the ropes. I think I'll be able to manage breakfast by myself tomorrow."

  "I ain't sure I want you managing any-"

  "Oh, excuse me, sir, there's something I want to ask before I forget. Tomorrow, should I set your place with Mr. Delanny, or at a table of your own?"

  "What? Ah, well… ah… well, I suppose a table of my own will do good enough." He hadn't anticipated being served breakfast from now on. Well, now!