A Congregation of Jackals (16 page)

“I am. Forty-four.”

“Why ain’t you married?”

“I like women too much.”

“What kind of answer is that? You ugly?”

“Yes. Do you know any blind women?”

“Just get a fat one. They can do stuff the same as the rest an’ can cook better.”

“I shall consider that. Are you married?”

“I was.”

“Did she pass on?”

“She left me when I started goin’ blind. She didn’t want to take care o’ no invalid.”

“That must have been difficult,” Dicky said, watching the oldster’s face constrict with bitterness.

“I couldn’t even find my gun when she told me, my eyes were so bad.”

“There is no justice in this world.”

“You tellin’ this to a blind man? I know that better than anyone!”

From the room behind the front desk, the attendant’s groggy voice croaked, “Somebody need something?”

“Go back to sleep, Greg,” the old man said, annoyed that his yelling had awakened the man.

Dicky asked, “Do you live here—in this hotel?”

“Yeah. I stay in a room here ’cause I can’t be blind an’ by myself. I need help an’ my wife left me, but I was too blind to shoot her.”

“You mentioned that. Would you have killed her?”

“Of course not. Why would I do that? I’d’ve just made it so she couldn’t run off. Maybe shoot her leg or flash the muzzle across her eyes so she’d know about bein’ blind herself.”

Dicky looked to see if the man wore a gun; he did not.

The New Yorker asked, “Do you have any children?”

“They’re miserable. You can’t count on them. Probably havin’ square dances with their mother, laughin’ at how blind I am.”

Dicky wanted to guide the conversation to a happier subject; he said, “Is this your favorite room in the hotel?”

“This is the room where I’m gonna meet Miss Isabel. That’s why I’m dressed up.” The old man pointed to his white suit and his white shoes. “This is the outfit I meet her in. She likes the color blue.”

Dicky decided not to point out the colorless nature of the man’s attire, and instead asked, “Does Miss Isabel meet you at dawn?”

“In the vision she did. But I come down early to be ready.”

Dicky had previously assessed the man as volatile and bitter (and amusing), though this last remark struck him as evidence of true dementia.

“You had a vision of this woman?”

“That’s right I did. About two years after my wife abandoned me I burnt down a lot of my house on accident. I was burneded up some myself an’ all blind by then an’ angry at everything—I tried to shoot this dog that was barking one night an’ T.W. takes my gun away and says, ‘No sir, Blackie, you can’t go shootin’ up dogs when you’re blind,’ which made me mad back then but makes sense to me now, ’specially cause kids play with dogs. T.W. looks at my house—which is half charcoal—an’ says I should move to a hotel where others can help me, and I told him I could take care of myself an’ he shouldn’t trouble me, I ain’t robbed no banks or nothin’. He’s the sheriff, if you didn’t know.”

“I figured that out.”

“So I was in my room an’ the rain is coming into the room next to me because I burneded out the ceiling in that one an’ I fall asleep and see this scene in my head.” Blackie raised his index finger. “That’s a thing you
prob’y didn’t know, blind people can see in their dreams if they ever had the power of sight in their lives, which I did for fifty-three years. That’s why I sleep a lot more than I used to. Didn’t sleep so much when I had good eyes. What was I about to tell you?”

“About the vision,” Dicky prompted him.

“Right. The most important part!”

The attendant, awakened by the old man’s exclamation asked, “Somebody need something?”

“Get the hell back to sleep!”

Dicky heard the attendant resettle in his cot; within an instant, the steady noise of his susurrations resumed.

“So I sees this vision that night in the storm. In it, I’m sittin’ in a hotel lobby on a green couch, wearin’ a blue suit. It’s dawn an’ through the window you can see a royal blue sky an’ just a little bit of the sun poking her head up from the grass like a gopher—pretty like in a paintin’. I’m sittin’ there, drinkin’ a tea”—Blackie pointed to a cup resting on the table beside him—“and I’m watchin’ the sun come up an’ this woman comes into the lobby. She is . . . she is . . .” The old man shook his head, the joy and sadness that struggled for control over his vocal cords made them warble. “She is beautiful. She asks the attendant for a room an’ her voice reminds me of the way my mama’s sounded when I was a little kid over in Hackett. I invite her to share tea with me an’ she comes over an’ sits right where you are now and I pour her a cup. We start talkin’ about the sunrise an’ things an’ at some point I realize that we’re sittin’ close an’ holdin’ hands. She tells me her name is Isabel an’ then I woke up.”

The oldster ruminated for a moment and then said, “I wish it went on longer, but that was it. I moved into this hotel not long after, so I could be close to this room.”

Dicky felt heartsick for the old man.

Blackie added, “Maybe it seems crazy to you that I come here every morning, but let me tell you somethin’. I never saw this lobby when I had good eyes—they hadn’t builded it yet. But I knew the color of this couch,” he said, patting the green couch. “And I knew about that window,” he said, pointing to the window on the eastern wall. “And I knew about the carpet,” he said, stamping his left shoe on the Oriental rug beneath him. “I knew it all without nobody tellin’ me. I saw ’em in my dream, an’ here they are for real. Explain that? You can’t! So that’s how I know Miss Isabel will come an’ have tea with me an’ sit close an’ hold hands an’ talk to me with that voice that sounds like my mama’s.”

“I do not know anything at all about visions, but it definitely sounds like you have had one.”

“It’s always disappointing when she don’t turn up, but then there’s another dawn comin’ up before you know it.” Blackie turned his blank gaze back to the window. The eastern horizon was beginning to glow.

Without warning, the old man said, “Get out of her seat. I don’t want it occupied when she gets here.”

Dicky stood up, shook Blackie’s cold hand and left the apparition to await his spectral mate.

Halfway up the stairs, Dicky turned and looked back down at the old man; the light from the window had painted his suit blue.

Beatrice sat opposite her father at the oak table; the vapors from the eggs, cheddar biscuits and panfried pork chops with onions rose up between them.

Her father inhaled deeply and said, “Smells like the best breakfast yet.” (He said this about half of the time.)

“Thank you.” Beatrice tilted her head forward, clasped her hands together and closed her eyes. “Come dine with us, Lord Jesus, be a guest in our home. Let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen.”

“Amen.”

She opened her eyes; her father looked at her and said, “I’m making breakfast tomorrow. You aren’t cooking for some old man on your own wedding day.”

Beatrice nodded her head appreciatively.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, T.W. lustily nodding his approbation over the food, which Beatrice agreed was particularly flavorful that morning. At one point he asked if she would set aside a chop, some gravy and a biscuit for Goodstead, and she informed him that she already had. Her mind ordered the many things that she intended to do that day prior to the social she and her father had arranged for the wedding guests (and any townsfolk not invited to the ceremony who simply wished to join in the celebration).

“There’s something I wanted to get at for a moment,” her father said, and then wiped his mouth.

Beatrice knew that he was going to say something
about her mother. Her father rarely spoke of the woman, and whenever he did, there was a preamble.

“Pretty soon it may not be appropriate for me to talk about certain things with you. People change some when they get married and I imagine that you will too—and that’s fine. So this is what I wanted to discuss now: I suppose that you and James plan on having children?”

Beatrice’s cheeks suffused with warmth at the remark, but she did not look away from her father when she responded, “We both like the idea of children.”

“I figured as much. You know what happened to your mother when she gave birth to you. I wanted to let you know that Bonnie, your mother’s mother who you never met, also had difficulties in giving birth to your mother. Did I ever mention this to you?”

“A long time ago.”

“She survived, but was always weak blooded afterward and never fully the same. I hate to tell you about this, but you should know that when you are with child, you need to take special care.”

“I shall.”

“For a lot of years I’ve saved up my extra money—all of my bonuses and those two big rewards I collected when I was a marshal—so that I could hire a private doctor from the East to watch you for the last part of your term and deliver the baby when the time came. I’ve got enough money to do it twice. Maybe three times.”

Beatrice’s eyes filled with tears. Of the many kind things her father had done for her during her twenty-nine years, this was perhaps the kindest of all.

“Don’t get upset.”

“I am not upset, I am—” She stood up, walked around the table, stood beside her father, leaned over and threw
her arms around him. She squeezed him fiercely and kissed him on the forehead. He hugged her in return.

“Better let go. I’m full of biscuits and pork.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

He grinned and said, “You haven’t called me Daddy in a while. Just hearing it makes me feel younger.”

Beatrice, at a loss for words, just repeated, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

The man picked up his napkin and Beatrice picked up hers; the two of them wiped tears from her cheeks, smiling.

In Beatrice’s estimation, Big Abe’s Dancehall of Trailspur was very far from ready for the evening’s festivities. The piano was there, but the chairs and the tables and the festoons and the welcome banner she had asked for were all absent; the floor needed to be polished as well.

The only person in the area was a Mandarin woman who sat upon an overturned bucket in a corner, poking and pulling a needle through the rent crotch of a very large pair of yellow trousers that almost certainly belonged to the proprietor.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Beatrice said.

The woman looked up and said, “What!”

“Do you know where I can find Big Abe?”

The woman raised the pants and said, “Big Abe.”

Beatrice said, “Do you know where he is?”

“His pants,” was her reply.

Beatrice pointed east and said, “Big Abe?” The Mandarin woman shook her head. Beatrice pointed west and said, “Big Abe?”

The Mandarin pointed her needle at the ceiling and said, “Big Abe up.”

Beatrice, befuddled, stared at the woman for a moment;
the Oriental jabbed her needle at the ceiling a second time. A loud thump sounded on the roof and Beatrice, comprehending, nodded to the Mandarin.

“Sheh-sheh,”
Beatrice said, the only Chinese she knew. The woman laughed, nodded and then replied in kind.

Beatrice walked outside Big Abe’s Dancehall of Trailspur and circumnavigated the gaily painted building (purple and yellow with some green) until she came upon a ladder angled against the south facade. Without hesitation, she applied herself to the rungs and climbed. When she reached the roof twenty-four feet above, she earned herself a splendid view of Big Abe’s posterior, so large and looming that it looked like the back of a lavender buffalo.

“Big Abe?”

The man stood up as if poked, turned around, bowed his bald, sun-reddened head and said, “Miss Jeffries. Good afternoon.”

Beatrice stepped off of the ladder and walked across the planks toward the rotund proprietor.

“What brings you to my roof?”

“Is the dance hall going to be ready for tonight?”

“You entertain doubts?”

“The space is empty, other than the piano, and the last time I heard that particular piano, it only had one octave that was correctly tuned.”

“Don’t trouble yourself, my dear. Everything will be organized by tonight. And correctly tuned.”

“Do I have your word? By five o’clock, the floors shall be polished and the chairs, tables, welcome banner and festoons shall be artfully arranged?”

“You can have my word. Or a sentence. Or some handshakes. Or we can go to Judge Higgins and draft some forms if you’d like—if that would dispel the doubts that currently assail you.”

“That is not necessary.” She returned to the ladder, descended one rung, stopped and said, “Please do not put rum in the fruit punch.”

“I shan’t.”

Beatrice climbed down the ladder, the dirt road rising up to meet her brown, two-inch-heeled boots.

When she was a yard from the ground, she heard Big Abe say, “The rum goes into the rum punch.”

The lobby of Hotel Halcyon was occupied by a dozen people, one of whom noticed her and waved, though she did not immediately recognize the amiable brown-haired gentleman. He stood up from the green couch, her name on his lips; a woman and a shy teenage girl rose up beside him. The family approached her.

“You look just like your mother,” the brown-haired gentleman said to Beatrice.

The woman beside him said, “We haven’t seen you since you were twelve. We’re the Albens, cousins of your mother’s, if you don’t remember us.”

“I most assuredly remember you. Thank you for coming out for the celebration,” she said as Mr. Alben took and kissed her hand. She then hugged the women—the mother, followed by the shy teenager. Beatrice first met the Albens when she and her father had visited Colorado (accompanied by her father’s cousin Robert) when she was twelve years old, though the shy girl had not yet been born. She recalled that they were successful in oil, pleasant conversationalists and intelligent. Mrs. Alben had written several news articles for the
Rocky Mountain Tribune
(under a man’s name), which had impressed Beatrice thoroughly at the time, and inspired her earliest contribution to the
Trailspur Gazette
five years later.