Incident at Twenty-Mile Read online

  "All right. I'll see you tomorrow at dinnertime. Oh, here. You'll be wanting this marshal's star back."

  "No, you keep it."

  "Well… thanks! Gee. Well, I guess I better be saying good night, Ruth Lillian."

  "Good night, Matthew."

  BY THE LIGHT OF his new lamp that burned with that nose-tingling new-lamp smell, he began to unpack and arrange things. He had taken almost everything of value from his home-well, there hadn't been all that much, really. He not only had a blanket and his clothes, but also a kettle, a frying pan, a coffee pot, his ma's hand mirror and comb (genuine animal bone), a mixed assortment of mugs and knives and forks, three chipped enamel plates, and a tin wash-up basin and pitcher. These he arranged on a shelf by the stove to make himself a kitchen of sorts.

  Think of it! Living in the marshal's office. The Ringo Kid, marshal. Hoo-birds!

  From other deserted houses, he had scavenged a bed, a big table and a smaller one, three straight-backed chairs, and a bentwood rocking chair that squeaked like his ma's used to-not the same note, but just about the same place on the back-push. He wasn't sure what he should do with the awkward old shotgun he had carried so far and with such effort. He should get rid of it, really. He'd meant to do that right from the first. Maybe he should bury it. But it was dark out, so he hung it on two square-cut nails over the doorway. And as he was doing this, it occurred to him that the marshal had probably driven those nails in to put his rifle up there, where it would be handy to hand, should there be trouble out on the street. He took from his pack the canvas sack that held twelve handmade, wax-dipped shells for the shotgun along with his other treasures: a small blue glass bottle he had found buried in the back yard of one of their many temporary homes (What used to be in it? Who had owned it? And, most mysterious of all: Why had they buried it?), a marble with an American flag suspended in the middle (How did they do that?), a rock with gold flakes in it that his pa said was nothing but fool's gold (but which might be real gold because, after all, Pa didn't know everything). To these treasures he added the six-pointed marshal's star that Ruth Lillian had given him. A badge for the man living in the marshal's office. He looked around for a safe place to stash his treasures and ended up pushing the canvas sack far back under the bed.

  After spreading out his blankets (Whew! He'd have to take the straw-filled mattress he'd scavenged and hang it in the sun to get rid of the mildew smell!), he arranged his collection of books on the small table. All but one of them were well-thumbed, cardboard-bound Ringo Kid books; the other was a broken-backed dictionary a teacher had given him. He loved looking up words in his dictionary and saying them over and over to himself until they were his. That night, he looked up chameleon, but it took him a while to find it because he began looking under "k," then under "ca." When he was satisfied that chameleon was forever his, he selected The Ringo Kid Deals Himself In, and settled back into his rocking chair in the middle of his house and began reading by the light of his lamp. It had been a long day, and he was dozing and dipping over the pages when he was jolted awake by a sound out in the street. Somebody was moaning… moaning and sobbing. His first fright-flash was that it might be one of the ghosts Ruth Lillian had mentioned, but the voice cried out in a whiskey-smeared voice that it was a sinner! A fornicator! A slave to the appetites of the flesh! Not worthy-No, Lord, not worthy! — to be a vassal of the Risen Christ and a vessel of His Sacred Word!

  Matthew blew out his lamp, took the old shotgun down, and quietly opened his door. A full moon hung over the foothills, filling the street with a slanting slate-blue light. And there, staggering down the street from the direction of the Traveller's Welcome, was a tall, black-clad figure wearing a round "parson's" hat. With each stumbling step, his boots raised a little puff of dust into the moonlight. A drunk! A stinking, slobbering drunk! If there was anything Matthew hated…! His hands tightened on the shotgun, and he forced himself to take slow, calming breaths, like his ma used to make him do when he was in a blind rage. Then he pressed his door closed and hung the gun back up over it. With a convulsive shudder he scrubbed his hands against one another to get the feeling of gun off them. Why had he hung the damned thing up there in the first place? He hated the sight of it!

  Without undressing-without even taking off his boots-he lay down on his rustling straw mattress and stared up into the darkness. The smell of mildew blended with the smell of just-blown-out lamp.

  From far down the street: Punish him, Lord! Chastise this foul and fallen sinner!

  And a little later, in a more distant voice:… but forgive him, Lord! Oh, please, please, forgive him!

  Late into the night, long after the drunken voice had gone silent, Matthew watched the door through a small peek-hole in the blankets he had pulled up over his head.

  THE NEXT MORNING, MATTHEW sat on the edge of his bed, his head throbbing, his blood thick, his eyes stiff. All night he had been pursued from one nightmare to another by… he couldn't remember exactly what. But it had a slimy texture and it… argh! He didn't want to think about it! He grunted to his feet and poured water into his basin and splashed it up into his face, snorting loudly to drive off the last clinging tendrils of dream.

  As he slowly dressed, numb-fingered, he considered his situation in Twenty-Mile. So far, things had gone pretty well. He had wormed his way in; now he had to make himself indispensable. During a childhood spent moving from town to town and school to school, he had developed his own technique for gaining admittance into new "gangs," one based upon his gift for role-playing and his particular thirst for respect. It was a two-step system. Step One: break your way through the gang's tough protective membrane in any way you can: lie, cheat, flatter, fight, amuse… whatever it takes. Step Two: once inside, you show yourself to be friendly, helpful, willing to play by their rules, and the gang will come to accept you, maybe even respect you. He never actually reaped the fruit of these tactics, because every time he started to settle in, his family moved on again. Mr. Delanny had assumed that Matthew's social ploys were devices for conning the marks; in fact, they were strategies for survival.

  After dragging his ma's genuine animal-bone comb through his wet hair, he went forth to show the Twenty-Mile gang just how accommodating and friendly a man could be.

  He found Jeff Calder in the hotel kitchen, cursing the Dayton Imperial stove and batting at the thickening smoke with a rag. Matthew's sunny "Mornin', sir!" was ignored as the veteran raged against goddamned-useless-sonofabitchin' stoves in general, and this goddamned-useless-sonofabitch of a stove in particular! And these new-fangled Diamond "book" matches! Either they don't strike at all, or the whole book burns up at once… and your goddamned fingers with it!

  "Say, now!" Matthew said. "That's an idea!" He set the flour, baking powder, and corn syrup he had bought at the Mercantile onto the drain board.

  "What's an idea?" Calder growled.

  "You were going to try opening that thingamabob-that grating at the bottom. And I think you're right, Mr. Calder. That just might do 'er."

  Jeff Calder located the air vent and tapped it open with the lid-lifter, and instantly the fire caught with a soft pop, and started burning so vigorously that it sucked back into itself some of the nearby smoke.

  "You got it!" Matthew said with unconcealed admiration.

  "Yeah, well… one thing the army teaches a man is how to get things done."

  "Thanks for giving me a head start with the stove, sir," Matthew said in a busy, bustling tone as he took off his jacket. "I'll take her from here. You said you wanted your breakfast set up at a separate table from Mr. Delanny's, is that right?"

  "Ah-h… well… Yeah, that's right."

  "You're the boss. Breakfast'll be ready in two shakes. Oh, by the way. Do you like biscuits?"

  "Sure."

  "Well, biscuits it'll be, sir. Just like my ma used to bake."

  "I THOUGHT I SMELT biscuits!" Queeny cried when Matthew set the steaming plateful on the girls' table and, with a flourish,
snatched off the towel covering them. Beside the dish, he placed a bowl of corn syrup and a spoon. "And you said I was crazy!" This last was directed to Frenchy, who cut open a biscuit, drizzled corn syrup over half, and popped it into her mouth.

  "The biscuits was Mr. Calder's idea," Matthew said over his shoulder as he carried a plate of four biscuits to Jeff Calder's table. "He said biscuits might be a good idea, didn't you, sir?"

  "Well… there ain't nothing wrong with having biscuits for breakfast!" the old man declared in a tetchy tone that dared anyone to suggest there was.

  Mr. Delanny received his plate of two biscuits with a half-cynical, half-admiring shake of his head.

  "Mr. Calder told me you usually only take coffee in the morning, sir. But I thought maybe…?"

  "You're some piece of work, you are."

  Matthew smiled. "That's the way it is with us chameleons. More coffee, sir?"

  "To go with my biscuits? Sure, why not?"

  Queeny grabbed Matthew's arm as he passed on his way back to the kitchen. "You know what you are, kid? You're a goddamned treasure, that's what. Biscuits! And bacon that ain't burned to a crisp… for once! You'd make some woman an A-number-one wife!" She hooted with laughter that produced a fine spray of biscuit.

  "You keep this up, boy," Frenchy said, "and who knows? You might win my heart."

  Although she didn't raise her eyes to meet Matthew's, Chinky was making fast work of her biscuits too, a blessed change for a woman with an oriental palate who had been obliged to stuff down bacon and cheese and other disgusting Western flavors and textures.

  "It was my ma taught me how to make them. I used to help her around the kitchen when she couldn't manage on her own."

  "O-o-o-o." Queeny's downward-plunging note reflected both the moist sentimentality of the drunk and the theatrical emotionalism of a woman who, as she would tell anyone who would listen, had earned more than her fair share of fame as an entertainer on the stage. "Well, you done right to help your ma. A body don't get but one mother in this life, and I don't care what anybody says. She's sickly, is she, your ma?"

  "She passed on, ma'am. Just a few days ago."

  "O-o-o-o-o."

  "Yes, well… I keep reminding myself that she's beyond pain and trouble now. And that's a consolation."

  "O-O-o-o-o-o. Ain't that the truth? I always say, if there's one thing in this world-Hey! You could leave a few of those for someone else, Frenchy! You don't have to cram them all down your gullet! Honestly! Some people is just hogs!"

  THENCEFORTH BISCUITS WERE A part of the morning routine at the Traveller's Welcome, as were a few minutes of bantering chat between Matthew and the girls. Frenchy had a wry, arid sense of humor, and his unconcealed appreciation of it caused her to try harder; Chinky would lift her eyes to exchange a fugitive smile for his facile one; and he always listened attentively to Queeny when she launched into her recollections of the good old days.

  "Did I ever tell you about when I was a dancer, kid?"

  "Only about two hundred million times," Frenchy muttered as she devoured a biscuit.

  "You should of heard the men hoot and whistle when I did my Dance of the Seven Veils!"

  "It'd take seven bed sheets to cover you now."

  It amused Mr. Delanny to note how Jeff Calder, having reaped all the credit for the improvement in the quality of the breakfast, was willing to admit, albeit with reluctance, that the boy was "a quick learner." But even Mr. Delanny's eyes lost some of their habitual world-weary scorn when he looked up from playing two-handed solitaire with Frenchy and saw Matthew hard at work, humming to himself as he swept the floor or wiped up the tables with cheerful energy.

  Matthew sensed that there was something between Mr. Delanny and Frenchy. She would occasionally sit at his table, and without a word he would sweep up the solitaire lay-out before him and deal out two-handed solitaire, which they would play in silence, a sharpness of concentration and a crispness of movement suggesting that each was eager to beat the other. They never spoke to one another, although a particularly unlucky run of cards might cause Frenchy to utter one of her succulently raunchy oaths that made even hardened miners blink and puff. When the game was over, she would leave the table, and Mr. Delanny would shuffle and lay out another game. No one else in the hotel ever dared to sit at Mr. Delanny's table. What was between them wasn't physical. It wasn't even friendship, in the ordinary way. But Matthew noticed that Frenchy always sat a little sideways at the card table, keeping the scarred side of her face away from Mr. Delanny. One night while he was pondering this strange relationship, muttering to himself as he always did when he was thinking things out, he decided that Frenchy and Mr. Delanny were like strangers passing time together while they waited for a train. "Strangers who are going in the same direction, but not to the same place." He was proud of that wording, and he remembered a teacher-the one who had given him her dictionary-once saying that he had a natural way with words. "Two people going in the same direction, but not to the same place," he repeated aloud. "Now that makes a body think. It's… deep. You know, maybe one of these days I'll get myself some paper and a pen and write myself a book. Something like Mr. Anthony Bradford Chumms. But I'll make my hero different from the Ringo Kid, so's people won't think I'm copying. My hero will be left-handed, and he'll cross-draw. And he won't be from Texas, like the Ringo Kid. He'll be from… Canada! That'd make him a foreigner and totally different. And he'll ride a pinto, rather than Ringo's big gray. And he'll…"

  Matthew's daily life soon assumed a rhythm. His morning work at the hotel turned out to be his principal source of income, because cleaning out the tubs and doing the barbershop was only a once-a-week chore, and the make-work jobs B. J. Stone and Coots scratched up for him never occupied more than five or six hours a week. Although his work at Kane's-the heavy tasks that Mr. Kane protested grumpily he could perfectly well do himself, but really couldn't because of chest pains- required only a couple of hours a day, the Mercantile became the hub of his life. He regretted that Mr. Kane never again talked about his early years as he had on that first night. Instead, soon after supper, he would say he was tired and would go to his bedroom while Matthew and Ruth Lillian were doing the dishes. Then the young people would sit on the porch for half an hour or so, looking out at the night sky above the foothills, enjoying the evening breezes, sometimes talking quietly, sharing vagrant wisps of thought that drifted into their minds, only rarely glancing at one another.

  It was during one of these rambling chats that Matthew learned enough about Reverend Hibbard's weakness of the flesh to arm himself against their first encounter. He was surprised at the matter-of-fact way Ruth Lillian spoke of the hotel as a "whorehouse."

  And impressed, too.

  THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER he had tugged his mother's comb through his wet hair, winking and flinching each time it stuck in a tangle, Matthew swilled his wash-up water around the basin, bumped his front door open with his hip, and threw the water…

  … right onto the boots of Reverend Leroy Hibbard, who was standing with his fist raised to knock at the door.

  "Hey! Watch what you're doing, boy!"

  "Oops, sorry! Didn't know you were there."

  "That ain't no excuse! I ought to box your ears for you!"

  Matthew looked up at the preacher for a moment, then answered in his soft Ringo Kid voice, "Well, sir, maybe it ain't an excuse, but it's an honest explanation. I'm truly sorry I got your shoes wet. But as for getting my ears boxed? That ain't going to happen. It just naturally ain't going to happen. You hear what I'm saying to you?" His experiences of being the new boy in school after school had left him with an instinctive recognition of the bully, and this preacher was a bully. Matthew had learned that backing off from bullies only whets their appetite for abuse. He could feel himself slipping into what he called "the Other Place," his habitual retreat from danger and aggression. While in this Other Place he remained aware of everything going on around him; but events took on a dreamlike vague
ness that stripped them of their menace. Matthew felt the profound safety of the Other Place begin to rise within him, as though drawn up through his spiritual wick.

  When the Reverend snapped, "What are you doing here, boy?" Matthew's eyes softened even more, and he smiled.

  "Well, right now I'm fixing to go to work."

  "No, I mean what are you doing in the marshal's office?"

  "I live here."

  "Oh, so you just moved in and took it over, is that it?"

  "Yes, sir. Same as you did down to the depot."

  "Say what?"

  "You took over an abandoned building. Just like me."

  "But I belong here."

  "So do I. This town's my home now." He smiled. "Well, sir, it's mighty kind of you to come wish me welcome, but I'm afraid I have to be getting to work. So if you'll excuse me?"

  But the preacher stood firm, his feet rooted in the puddle of his shadow. His gaunt body was rigid both with an affected dignity and a genuine hangover that was manifest in nicks on his concave cheeks caused by shaving with an unsteady hand. For all the Reverend's stiff aridity, most of his details were liquid: watery eyes laced with angry blood vessels, a wet, drooping lower lip, beads of sweat on his brow, a phlegmy baritone voice decorated with that false tremolo preachers use to lend gravity to the Sacred Word. Even his diction was moist, in part because of the slackness of his mouth, and in part because of the absence of back teeth. Having gained no edge over this young interloper on the issue of residence, he shifted to more familiar ground. "Tell me, boy. Have you been born again into the ways of righteousness?"

  "I can't rightly say. But my ma used to read the Bible every night, if that's any help."

  "The Devil hisself can quote scripture!"

  The smell of stale whiskey caused Matthew's stomach to tighten. "I hope you ain't saying my ma was a devil."

  "What I'm saying is that quoting the Bible don't make a sinner into a saint."