A Congregation of Jackals (18 page)

The sheriff took a step back and assessed the men as if they were newly arrived beeves to be priced for slaughter.

He said, “Have some of the funnel cake—my cousin made it, and his recipe is better than anyone else’s. It’s got nuts and cinnamon and little bits of candied ginger in it.”

“I was eyeing the funnel cake,” Godfrey remarked.

Wilfreda struck ten keys as if they were evil siblings, and an enormous harmony enveloped the crowd. Like a weary climber attempting steep stairs, the ancient woman pulsed a lugubrious rhythm on her ivory. The air grew heavy and warm.

An attractive ash-blonde woman approximately Oswell’s age, wearing a shapely (arguably immodest) lavender dress, called out from the crowd, “T.W.”

The sheriff turned to look at the woman and said, “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Lingham remarked, “The Widow Evertson seems to want your company. She’s sure dressed up for it.”

Beatrice laughed, looked at Lingham and said, “He replaced me before I even left the house.”

“No I didn’t,” T.W. said defensively. “She just wants some company is all.”

Wilfreda’s left hand trudged up a hill of keys while her right digits wove a delicate melody that never ended in the correct place. The crowd swayed, enthralled.

The widow arrived, grabbed T.W.’s right arm and said, “I’ll show you how to waltz.”

The sheriff looked at Oswell and said, “See you fellas around. Stay out of trouble.” He glanced at the
valise in Oswell’s hand and then inscrutably at Lingham and was gone.

“I wish to dance too,” Beatrice said, pulling her fiancé after her father to the raised area of the dance floor.

Oswell, Godfrey and Dicky stood for a moment watching the celebrants.

“He knows we’ve been on the wrong side,” Oswell said.

“He does. Good thing he doesn’t know how to deal with that widow,” Godfrey remarked.

Big Abe, luminous in his yellow suit and hat, transcended the swaying crowd; he climbed a foot ladder, rising above the revelers like a cyclopean canary.

The rotund man cupped his hands, set them on either side of his mouth for amplification and yelled out, “Longways dance!”

Wilfreda picked up the tempo of her playing; the assembly divided into male and female lines, eight rows to accommodate all of the dancers. Oswell saw Lingham skip into position opposite Beatrice.

“Let’s partner up,” Dicky said, flung an arm around Godfrey’s shoulders and walked the older Danford to a deficient line opposite two pretty young women likely half their age.

“Two steps front and two steps back,” Big Abe called out. The lines advanced toward each other, halted (a yard still between them) and then retreated whence they came. Wilfreda ran her right hand up the keyboard and played a diminished trill; the notes stabbed Oswell’s eardrums like icicles.

“Three steps front and six in place,” Big Abe called out. The lines advanced to each other, stopped face-to-face, and marched in place. During the static stepping,
a few eager couples pecked or swatted each other, Lingham kissed the top of Beatrice’s head, Dicky introduced himself to a redheaded woman who had not stopped blushing since the moment he had walked opposite her in the dance line and Godfrey waved shyly to the lady with pigtails with whom he danced.

“Get on back, three steps back,” Big Abe ordered, and the genders retreated from one another. “Clap your hands three times fast.” The assembly brought their hands together thunderously. “Clap your hands three times fast and stomp the wood three times slow.” The assembly clapped sharply and stomped loudly in time with Wilfreda’s tempo. During the final footfall, Oswell heard a shriek outside the dancehall that chilled his blood.

“Three steps front and step in place.” The genders reunited. Oswell stared at the front doors of the dance hall. He heard another shriek; it was a horse in agony.

“Take your partner’s right hand and shake it!” Oswell glanced back at his companions. Lingham and Beatrice shook hands, both of them laughing; Dicky claimed the pale fingers of his voluptuous partner and kissed them; Godfrey shook hands with his mousy mate as if he had just sold her a doorknob. “Tell your partner, ‘Howdy!’ ”

Seven score voices said, “Howdy,” in unison.

“You sure look nice tonight.”

“You sure look nice tonight,” the crowd repeated.

“Why thank you.”

“Why thank you!”

“Your comportment is beyond reproach.”

“Your comportment is beyond reproach!”

“Now curtsy.” The crowd crossed their feet and bent their knees, each gesture on the downbeats of Wilfreda’s music. “Take three steps back and step in
place.” The genders released each other and retreated back to their homogenous lines.

Oswell walked toward the door of the dance hall, sweat running down his back; his beige shirt and blue jacket clung to his skin. He turned his head to look for the sheriff. The man was far off, wincing as he marched in place opposite the widow. From the valise, Oswell clandestinely withdrew a ten-shooter and tucked it into his belt. He opened the door an inch and looked outside.

Cool air blew upon his sweat-glazed forehead as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. In the middle of the road he saw two loose horses, each walking in circles. One groaned in agony and collapsed to the dirt, whickering. Oswell put his hand upon his revolver and went outside.

“Take three steps forward and grab your partner’s hands.” The stampede of the lines converging covered over the sound of him shutting the door.

Oswell looked north and then south; other than an older couple walking toward the saloon at the end of the avenue, he saw nobody. The rancher approached the horses.

Big Abe’s stentorian exhortations were audible through the shut door. The pitch of his voice mirrored the lyric when he said, “Hold those hands up so high and drop them down, so darn low. But don’t you dare fall in love. No, no, no—not just yet!”

One steed lay upon the ground, kicking its hooves sideways across the dirt, its intestines strung out like steaming gray rope in all directions, a few loops tangled about one of its legs. The other horse was upright; it dragged its hanging entrails beneath it and whickered. Both of these animals were Lingham’s: the white one was the steed Godfrey had ridden and the
brown mare was the one Oswell himself had mounted. The fallen horse quieted; dirt thickened its spilt blood. The walking mare continued up the street; its pink and brown entrails hissed as they dragged across the soil.

The rancher took the reins of the upright beast and walked it into an alley. The mare’s steps grew less stable as its blood drained out and the length of its strewn guts grew longer and longer, but the female trudged on. He walked it past the offal bins of the butcher and into a small coppice, where he withdrew a large-caliber five-shot revolver from the valise, placed the barrel to its head, thumbed the hammer and fired. The horse sank to its knees, its eyes and mouth open as if to ask a question. Oswell thumbed the hammer and fired again. The horse collapsed.

Oswell walked seven yards away from the carcass, picked up a stick, pricked the beast’s dirt-encrusted intestines and dragged them back over to the rent torso. The mare’s right hoof was still moving. Oswell knew that the motion was a dying reflex.

The rancher left the coppice and returned up the alley, kicking dirt over the trail the horse’s guts had scored into the ground. He emerged onto the main avenue and went toward the fallen horse. Two men stood on the other side of the dead steed, limned by the light of the moon; Oswell pointed his five-shooter at them and thumbed the hammer before his heart pulsed another beat.

“We didn’t do it,” the man on the left said. “We’re marshals.”

The rancher, his gun still out, approached the duo; they were both in their sixties—one had a cane and the other a strange gaping grin on his face, even though
the situation had clearly disturbed him. Oswell surveyed the environs and looked back over his own shoulder in case these two were decoys, but saw nothing. He appraised the marshals a second time and slid his revolver back into his belt, beside the ten-shooter. He trod toward the pair, his eyes and ears alert.

“This your horse?” the one with the cane asked.

“Yeah. I went after the guy who did it.”

“You get him?”

“We heard shots,” the other one remarked.

“No.”

Across the street, two boys had arrived to stare at the dead horse; they chewed taffy. Oswell needed to get this animal off of the street before a throng gathered.

He took the reins of Dicky’s and Lingham’s horses and walked them over to the fallen animal. He took rope from the back of Lingham’s saddlebag and went to the dead white steed’s upraised hooves.

“That’s a good idea. Don’t want that pretty bride to come out and see this,” the one with the weird smile said.

The marshals helped Oswell secure ropes around the legs of the dead horse; they pulled hard to make sure the knots were secure and could bear the weight. Oswell cut and wrapped a separate rope around the animal’s entrails and then tied that coiled, viscous burden to the beast’s harness in order to contain the mess.

“You see any wood?” Oswell asked the men; the trio looked around the area.

From within the dance hall, Big Abe said, “Swing your partner round and round.”

Oswell saw a sign on the adjacent storefront upon which the name
VICTOR
’
S EMPORIUM
had been written
and then painted over with the word “Closed.” He walked to the five-foot sign, pulled it down from the hooks upon which it hung, set it on the ground, stamped his boot in the middle of it, lifted the right edge and snapped it in half. With the applied shoulders (and cane) of the marshals, Oswell slid the pieces of wood beneath the dead horse, raising it from the ground.

He took the reins of the living horses and walked them forward; the ropes that tethered them to the fallen animal snapped taut; the dead steed’s white limbs jerked forward; the carcass slid across the ground on its ersatz skis. Oswell guided the horses toward the coppice in which he had disposed of the mare. The marshals walked alongside him.

The one with the weird smile said, “Should we tell T.W.?”

“His daughter’s getting married tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to trouble him with this business,” Oswell said.

“You’re right. You are right. Let’s not mention it,” the one with the cane said. “Smiler doesn’t use his head.”

“And Smith don’t got no manners.”

After depositing the carcass into the coppice, Oswell and the marshals went to a water pump and cleaned themselves up. The rancher thanked the duo for their aid, to which they nodded their heads. The three men entered the dance hall.

The longways dance had evolved into a wide circle of people clapping in time with Wilfreda’s up-tempo polka music. In the middle of the clearing were three dozen couples, including Lingham and Beatrice, who danced with each other like birds buffeted by a gale, circling, swatting and clasping each other, trying to make sense of the tempest. A few of the woman’s
blonde curls came loose from the bun at the back of her head and her neckline dampened with sweat; she kicked out an inexorable riot upon the floor barely matched by her husband-to-be’s backward footwork. Oswell recalled the first time he had seen Lingham dance in Alabama and grinned at the memory.

The ancient piano player raised the tempo and wove a few sinister notes into the melody. Oswell looked at Wilfreda and saw that her head was tilted back on her neck; her eyelids fluttered; her mouth moved as if she were speaking to somebody who hovered in the air directly above her. It seemed to him as if she were saying the word “murderers” over and over again.

T.W. watched his daughter and James exercise (and possibly exorcize) themselves in the center of the platform, sweaty illustrations of Wilfreda’s playing. He supposed that the devout couple used dancing as a surrogate for the physical passion they had thus far abstained from sharing.

When Beatrice was little, her belief in a heavenly reunion with her deceased mother had helped her cope with the absence more than anything else. Consequently, no matter where they lived, T.W. took his little girl to church at least twice a week. The tales and parables had been deeply impressed upon his receptive
daughter at an early age and made her a far more devout Christian than he ever was himself. T.W. could not help but make extrapolations regarding what all of this suppressed desire would result in once she was married . . .

He did not like to think of his daughter that way, but her rapture on the dance platform told him more than he wanted to know.

Meredith touched his bad hip and asked, “How does it feel now?” The widow’s fingertips went to the very perimeter of what was appropriate to caress on his plaid pants.

“Better. I just need to be careful. When it starts to complain, I need to listen, even when a beautiful woman wants me to quadrille.”

Meredith grinned at the compliment, pointed to James and asked, “Where did he learn to move like that?”

“He was a pugilist. Footwork is important in that sport,” T.W. said, now uncertain as to how much he believed about what he knew of James’s past.

“He certainly is enthusiastic.”

T.W. nodded and looked back at the man who would be his son tomorrow. James tapped his feet in a quick shuffle, grabbed Beatrice’s hands and pulled her around; their laughter was near maniacal. Behind them, Richard Sterling lit a blush on Roland Taylor’s daughter’s face, though the New Yorker seemed at all times respectful. Godfrey Danford stood at the perimeter of the circle, beside Annie, each of them drinking punch.

“Your girl can dance real good,” an old familiar voice said to T.W. He turned around and looked into the grinning face of Smiler and then over at Smith beside him.

The sheriff clasped and heartily shook each man’s right hand.

“I’m glad you fellas got out here,” T.W. said.

“We promised we would. And tell us, where did you steal that angel from?” Smith said, pointing to Beatrice with his cane.

“I raised her.”