Cottonwood (11 page)

“Bill, I’m so sorry Ninna couldn’t be with us after all,” Maggie said as we took our places, as though it were something she and I had previously discussed. I was interested to note no sign that she had recently been ill. “Rose, will you remove Mrs. Ogden’s place setting please?”

I looked over at the Rectors as Rose complied. Tiny was still overwhelmed by the place, but Maggie’s pretense was so transparent that it elicited a little involuntary mou of disapproval from Mrs. Rector, who was normally happy to overlook my marital irregularities. I could understand her discomfort, because there was no avoiding the fact that this felt for all the world like one married couple dining with another.

The first course was vichyssoise, and Maggie presumed to explain that it was intentionally served cold.

“Just because I live on the prairie doesn’t make me an idiot,” Mrs. Rector snapped. “I went to one of the finest girls’ schools in all of New England, I speak French perfectly and I know all about vichyssoise.” She pronounced it “vichyswah,” and I thought it best not to correct her.

“I do wish I spoke French, Lillian,” Maggie said, placing her own hand appeasingly upon Mrs. Rector’s. “Having a French name would be so much more splendid if I could pronounce it properly.”

Tiny was lapping up his own soup contentedly, to all appearances blind to the discord between his wife and Maggie. “Oh, boy, now, that’s a good bowl of soup,” he said, wiping a goodly portion of it from his beard with his linen napkin. The second course consisted of terrine of duck’s liver in aspic, which Maggie had the good grace not to explain. I spread a bit of mine on a chunk of Madame Renée’s bread and elicited a curl of Mrs. Rector’s lip; she cut hers daintily with knife and fork and ate it as though it were a cutlet, and her husband and Maggie did the same. It was a lovely concoction regardless of how it was eaten, and I offered the opinion that Madame Renée might do well to open a restaurant.

“She sure would, Bill,” Tiny said, his beard below his lip now smeared with duck’s liver. “That new one on Seward’s sure no good. Took my lunch there yesterday and it was godawful. Meat was tough as pine bark and gamy, too. Don’t know where they got it.”

“Not easy to get supplies in a place like this,” I said.

“This was meat, Bill. So much damned meat around these parts you’d really have to make an effort to find a bad cut.” He leaned back in his chair and patted his stomach. “Anyway, in a month or so you’ll be able to get anything you want, via the railroad, and a good thing, too. My inventory’s had to double of late. It’s all moving, too, right out the door.”

“Don’t talk business at the table.”

“I’m not talking business,” he said. “This is politics. I was by the land office this afternoon and that Sullivan told me the best thing I ever did as mayor was laying out the town in a grid with regular rectangular parcels, ’cause he’s doing thirty transactions a day sometimes and it sure makes it simpler. ’Course when I did that I never thought we’d get so big so fast. Almost makes your head swim.”

“Well, it’s not all good,” Mrs. Rector sniffed. “Some of those changes a town could do without. The fallen women, for example.”

“All those men need to be entertained,” I said.

“Entertainment needn’t entail debasement.”

“Indeed it needn’t,” Maggie agreed. “I believe that a theatre or an opera house is what we’ll be needing next.”

Again Mrs. Rector sniffed. “Just as bad as the brothels.”

“I beg your pardon?” Maggie asked.

“Show people,” she said.

Maggie’s face flushed, but her response was pre-empted by the return of Rose, who refilled my and Tiny’s glasses, took up the plates and scuttled quickly out of the room.

Tiny leaned back again, taking the front legs of his chair off the ground. “Well, it sure makes all those men easier to control.” Upon receiving a sharp look from his wife he felt it necessary to clarify. “All’s I’m saying is, when you get a whole lot of single men together in one place, you get problems. When they can go get themselves a little . . .” He stopped himself and backtracked. “When they can do a little courting, they comport themselves in a more civilized manner.”

“That’s enough, Henry.”

“All’s I’m saying . . .”

“That’s enough.”

He started to open his mouth, but the door opened and Rose brought in the main course, a pair of
canards à l’orange
, and he set his chair back firmly on the floor in preparation for it.

We were mostly silent during the consumption of the ducks, but Tiny was thinking still; once, his mouth half-full, he said, “Whores ain’t all bad for a town, anyway.” I honestly don’t think he knew he’d spoken it aloud, so wounded and innocent was the expression on his face following the jab he received from his wife’s elbow.

After dinner we retired as per usual to the parlor for music, but tonight’s recital was briefer than most. The Rectors both lacked musical training, and so in place of Marc’s blatant adoration we had Tiny looking on in sweaty consternation at my attempt at a mazurka by Louis Gottschalk, and Mrs. Rector next to him, her contemptuous scowl growing thinner and thinner with each measure I played. Upon finishing I stood regretfully to offer my thanks to the hostess, since the Rectors were plainly anxious to leave, and I suspected that for propriety’s sake Mrs. Rector would delay their leavetaking until I took my own.

And so, bundled properly against the chill of the night and after some chatter between the women, the Rectors and I made our way out into the evening.

“Say, Bill, why don’t we drop Lillian off and you and I’ll go get a drink. I got a couple of things I wanted to discuss with you. City business.”

That suited me fine, as I already had the intention of stopping in at the saloon for a quick drink and some jawboning before bed. Mrs. Rector said nothing until we got to the dry goods store, at the back of which sat their apartment. Tiny unlocked the front door and we marched single file through the darkened aisles, past the display cases full of leather gloves and corsets, the shelves laden with bolts of cloth and finished goods, the pickle barrels and their briny odor. The store was now twice its original width, Tiny having evicted the clothing merchant who had until recently shared the eastern half of the retail floor, and still, in the dark anyway, it appeared well-stocked. When we reached the rear apartment Mrs. Rector opened the door and hastened inside to light the lamp. In its dim light, she addressed me directly and sadly, and with her hard shell softened by emotion one saw the remnants of the beauty she must have been when Tiny married her.

“Why don’t you boys talk in here? Surely this is nicer than going out in that cold again.”

“It’s not as cold as all that,” Tiny said. “And we’re wanting a drink.”

To my astonishment Mrs. Rector opened a cabinet and extracted from it a familiar, flat green bottle. “There’s whiskey here, Hank.” I’d never heard anyone call him that before, though I knew Henry was his proper name.

“We got city business to discuss, Lil, I already told you that. Now you just get on to bed and don’t worry about where we are.”

Silently she retreated into the other room and closed the door behind her; through it a moment later I heard her say, “Good night, Bill, it was pleasant seeing you.” Her voice was dull and resigned, and Tiny jerked his thumb at the door.

“Let’s get,” he mouthed silently, and we did.

They would be moving out of the apartment soon; as he locked the front door of the dry goods store Tiny described to me the large house they were building a block away. Their grown daughter had married a dentist in Independence, and the Rectors were trying to convince them to relocate to Cottonwood, using the promise of a rent-free place in the new house and the opportunity to be the first dentist in a growing town where nearly every night occasioned a tooth-loosening brawl.

Stepping into the street I thought I spied Katie Bender in the distance, carrying a parcel. I wondered why she was in town so late and where she was staying; I knew she hadn’t alerted Maggie to her presence, because she’d remarked that very evening on the fact that she hadn’t seen Katie since the latter had returned to the family farm. She disappeared around the corner of Main and Lincoln before I could be certain it was she.

“Don’t even feel like the same town, does it?” Tiny asked as we walked slowly down the middle of Main Street in the direction of the saloon. As leisurely as our pace was, Tiny still breathed like a racehorse, his open mouth unfairly lending him the aspect of an idiot. There were sounds from all directions—a loud, angry discussion about borrowed money, hoofbeats down the newly-constructed wooden sidewalk (upon which horses, in principle, were forbidden), the whinnying of another horse in the opposite direction; a drunkard’s careless laughter, his companion ordering him to shut the hole in his face, the delighted whooping and rebel-yelling of a small crowd of onlookers as the discussion erupted predictably into fisticuffs.

“Sounds like someone’s making work for your son-in-law already, Tiny,” I said as cheers rose into the night following a loud, bony cracking. The fight sounded as if it was happening on First Street, a block away, and I was tempted to go and watch.

“Two, three months ago this town would have been quiet as the tomb this time of night.”

“That’s so,” I said. “I believe I like this better.”

“Me, too. ’Course it changes everything. Shit, you know what it costs to hire a goddamn police force? A lot.”

I knew that, because half the newly hired force spent half their pay as well as a goodly portion of the workday at the saloon, which meant I was getting a large chunk of that new municipal funding.

Tiny shook his head in wonder. “Goddamn, I’ll be relieved when that friend of yours takes the mayor’s job.”

“That’s good to hear. He’s afraid you’re offended he wants it.”

“Nah. It’s not a part-time job any more, and I got enough to worry about just keeping the town supplied with boots and water pitchers.”

We crossed paths at that point with Paul Lowry, who despite my frank misgivings had been hired for the new police brigade. He was shoving a prisoner ahead of him in a jocular way, the man’s hands secured behind him via an iron cuff. The prisoner was short and slight, naturally, but he met my stare with sullen and fearless hostility.

“Evening, Mr. Mayor. Bill.”

“Evening, Lowry. Who’ve you got here?”

“Won’t tell me his name, but he tried to rob a harlot and her client.”

“That’s a damnable lie and you know it,” the prisoner spat, turning to face Lowry, who quickly went for a baton looped in his belt. At the brandishment of the stick the man cringed, and Lowry snickered. As they got nearer I saw that there was blood dripping down the prisoner’s forehead. All the menace had evaporated from his mien.

“Is that so? Well, lock him up and we’ll see about him in the morning. Maybe a few smacks from that stick would help jog his memory. Good night, Paul,” Tiny said, and they proceeded to the jailhouse.

“Shit. Too many damned people to keep track of. I had a man show up this afternoon, wanted to know how he could find his cousin. I said how should I know where your cousin is? He says he was supposed to get here and immediately write back home with an address. Came down from Topeka, heard there was work. Well, he never wrote home, though his father was sick and maybe dying, so the cousin came looking. And there he is acting as though it’s my responsibility to keep track of every damned drifter who wanders down here or doesn’t. Shit.”

“Won’t be your responsibility much longer,” I said.

“No, it’ll be Leval’s, and he’s welcome to it.” For a moment he appeared to lapse into a reverie. When we arrived at the saloon I turned toward the door and started to go in, but Tiny stopped me with a hand to the shoulder. “Regarding Leval, Bill, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you to watch yourself.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re bird-dogging that Maggie of his and not making much of a secret of it, and I don’t figure he’s the kind to let that pass.”

“I’m not bird-dogging anybody. I was invited to dinner, just like you were.”

He waved his hand as though swatting a horsefly in the air before his face. “I’m not the only one’s remarked on it. Just about everyone’s been there for dinner when you were there’s said the same thing. Now maybe Marc hasn’t noticed, or maybe he thinks there’s no danger his wife might fancy you. But on the basis of what I saw going on between you two tonight I’d say that’s wrong.”

“Nothing was going on,” I protested, but it rang false even to my own ear.

“Just don’t give him a reason to want to do you harm. You have a big future in this town, if you don’t get your pecker doing all your arithmetic.”

“All right,” I said, chastened; I had been certain my desires were well hidden, and the fact that they weren’t seemed to call for reappraisal of all my plans. I pushed the door open and started inside, expecting Tiny to follow.

“Well, good night, Bill,” Tiny said, continuing off to the south.

“You’re not coming in with me?” I asked.

He stopped. “Nah, I’m headed down to the whores’ camp.”

“Watch yourself,” I told him.

“Oh, they’re all right down there. It’s a shame that goddamn Barnes had to throw that pair of ladies out of the hotel, though. They were class, those two. Shit, you’d hardly know they were whores if they didn’t ask for payment up front.”