Cottonwood (3 page)

“It’s my house, Garth,” I pointed out helpfully.

“And letting the cold air inside, I’m liable to catch a got-damn chill and die.” He shut the door behind him, darkening the room and creating the vivid impression that he intended to do me harm.

“Hell, it’s colder inside here than out,” I said. “Don’t you build a fire at night?”

The hearth was nearly bare, the few ashes therein gray and cold. “Don’t get in here until real late, and I’m too tired to start one then.”

“Why don’t you just sleep in there with her? Hell, you don’t think I mind, do you?”

He looked away sheepishly, relaxing his fists, and his shoulders sank as the air escaped from his lungs in something resembling a sob of despair. “It ain’t you, Bill, it’s her. Mrs. Ogden. She don’t, she don’t permit it.”

“You call her Mrs. Ogden?”

He looked down at the hard dirt floor and nodded.

“At her request?”

He nodded again, and I shook my head and chuckled. At that he gave me a sharp glance, but soon looked down again, then to his left. He picked at the exposed sod next to the doorframe, pouting like a babe.

“There’s all kinds of things a man’ll do for his sweetheart that he mightn’t have thought he would’ve,” he said quietly, and all at once I believed I knew some of the things she’d been making him do, things she’d learned from me. She knew enough not to ask a passing drummer to perform such acts upon her person, but with my besotted employee she didn’t hesitate to insist upon them; probably she suspected that he would become shamefully addicted to them, as it appeared he had.

“All right, it’s up to you, Garth, but if I were you I’d tell her you’re not putting your mouth down there again until she lets you sleep in the room with her.”

He nodded but continued to look away as I passed by him in the doorway, pushing the plank open with my shoulder. I passed by the house on the way to untie my horse and looked in the window, annoyed with Ninna for her lack of charity toward the poor fellow. It was snowing harder now, and little Clyde was attempting to pack some of it into a ball for throwing.

“Who’s that for?”

“That’s for drummers,” he said.

“What you got against drummers?” I asked him, a little concerned about what he might have seen the day before.

“Just don’t like ’em,” he said, and he threw the snowball at the side of the house. The snow was too dry and powdery, and it disintegrated before it reached its target. Undeterred, he reached down and started collecting some more. He bore an uncanny resemblance to my own father, both physical and temperamental. At seven years of age he had the demeanor of a middle-aged minister, and had accumulated as much learning as most adults; it was my hope to send him east for his schooling when he was twelve or so. As I rode off in the direction of town he seemed perfectly and happily unaware of me.

Shortly after I returned to the bar late in the afternoon, the door opened, letting in a dose of cold dry wind and the stately bulk of Tiny Rector. At six and a half feet his height was as striking as his obesity, though once the novelty of his size had worn off it was his rheumy, pale blue eyes that held your attention. Set against the near-black of his buffalo coat they seemed even lighter in hue, almost as white as the surrounding vitreous.

“Afternoon, Tiny,” I said. Winded, he responded with a mere rasping grunt and quickly became distracted by a headline on a newspaper I’d plastered vainly onto the wall for insulation. It had been less effective here than in the old sod house; the papers quickly split along the cracks between the planks of the wall, and the wind blew through in miniature gusts that cooled the room considerably, no matter how hot the stove might be burning. In the blue white light from the window he squinted at the small type of one of his own advertisements with his back to me, and I began to suspect that the visit was official in nature; he was Cottonwood’s mayor and de facto constable as well.

It was unusual to see Tiny before closing time for his store, so as his wind returned I broke the silence by pointing this out to him.

He turned toward me, as though just remembering the reason for his visit. “Goddamnit, Bill, what’s this I hear about you firing shots across Main Street?”

“You heard those shots yourself, Tiny, I saw you standing on the sidewalk in front of the store a minute later. What’s the matter, somebody bellyaching?”

“A whole lot of somebodies, Bill. There’s one or two want you arrested as an example. My own wife, among them, and you know how fond she is of you.”

“You planning to arrest me, Tiny?”

He held a finger out at me. “By Christ, I sure will if you do any such thing again. Goddamnit, Bill, we’re trying to run this like a real town. What the hell was the idea, anyway? I heard you gave that poor clothwit drummer a licking, too.”

“That poor drummer laid my wife and bragged about it.”

I had him there and he knew it. He propped his forearm onto the bar and leaned in for a different tack. “Let me tell you something, Bill. There’s going to be some big changes around Cottonwood and damned soon, too, when the railroad comes through. How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“There’s going to be opportunities for an ambitious young fellow like you, provided you don’t wreck things beforehand.”

The old opportunity-knocks-but-once oratory was one I’d heard many times, and I was only half listening as I poured him a shot of bourbon, his usual vice. “Uh-huh.” I nodded as he droned on about the future growth of Cottonwood and the part I could play in it.

He downed his bourbon and held the glass up for inspection, as though it might hold more if he looked carefully enough. “When I saw him he didn’t mention the shots, so maybe they passed unnoticed. I hope that’s so, for your sake.”

“Who’s that?”

He set the glass down and glared at me. “Mr. Leval and his wife.”

“Who’re they?”

He slammed his palm down onto the bar. “Goddamnit, Bill, you haven’t been listening to a damned word I’ve said! Leval’s the fellow that’s putting up the mansion. They got into town last night, and that’s why you can’t be carrying on any more like you did this morning.”

“Oh.”

“This Leval’s got plans I can’t tell you about, but believe me, in a year’s time you won’t know this poor little town. We’ll outshine Cherryvale and Independence both.”

I filled up his glass again. It didn’t seem likely to me; I was used to hearing grand schemes hatched at the bar. He looked sideways down at the bourbon and seemed as if he were about to turn it down, but there it was in his glass, and it would have been a shame to let it go to waste. He knocked it back and wiped his beard with his sleeve.

“Two bourbons and still an hour and a half before I can close the store,” he said, shaking his bearded jowls in a mock shudder. “Christ, Lillian better not find out about that.” His wife was a pleasant-looking but stern woman, and Tiny’s return to the Dry Goods and Grocery with liquor on his breath would be occasion for a haranguing. “I’d better get along, now, Bill, but you mind what I said. There’s no room for them kind of monkeyshines in Cottonwood any more.”

He waddled to the door and gave the frame a slap with the palm of his hand, then gave me a tiny, perfunctory wave good-bye. After his departure I took advantage of the lull in trade to remove Suetonius from beneath the bar and, pulling a chair up next to one of the lamps, began to read.

I hadn’t got far when Ed Feeney stepped through the door. Ed was the editor and publisher of the
Labette County Optic
, and he rubbed his hands together against the cold.

“Jaysus, Bill, why don’t you paper over those cracks? Cold as a witch’s tit in here.”

I looked up at him without offering a verbal response.

“I heard there was gunplay this afternoon. Care to comment?”

“You want a drink, Ed?”

“Give me a shot of rye. I heard Tiny came by to give you hell, too.”

I poured him his shot and took his coin. He peered over his spectacles at me, waiting patiently for my answer, but I leaned back and returned to
De Vita Caesarum
, or pretended to.

It was my ambitious father who began my studies in Latin and Greek, at an age when most schoolboys are still learning to figure simple sums and read the simplest of Bible verses. They are all I got from him besides the slant of my jaw and the signet ring, since lost; if all that my education had ended up affording me was a little time of quiet reflection between rounds of serving drinks, I thought, it was probably enough.

There was no business until the late afternoon, at which time Tim Niedel and Michael Cornan walked in, and Tim slapped a quarter down onto the table.

“Whiskey, barkeep.”

“Same,” Cornan said. He claimed to be a preacher, though he had no church and worked with Tim six days a week when it was to be had. His face resembled an unbaked bread loaf just punched down by the baker’s powdered fist; that the distal part of his nose had been eaten away by some ailment, most likely venereal, added to the impression of concavity. He countered it with a thick whisk broom of an unwaxed mustache so large and unruly that it would have been funny if not for the sullen hostility expressed permanently by his gray eyes. Other than those glistening, cunning slits, he resembled nothing so much as a neglected corpse left unburied on the field of battle to puff with methane, just beginning to slowly deflate.

“Looking at the Good Book, are you, Bill?” Tim said.

“History,” I corrected him.

“There’s plenty of history in the Bible,” Cornan said with some menace. Offering no further argument I poured him a shot.

“That Leval got to town last night,” Tim said. “Stayed in the second floor suite of the hotel with his wife.”

“That’s what I hear.”

He spit a cheekful into the spitoon at his feet and slammed his whiskey down. “Yep. Wants to keep an eye on the building, is my guess, as it goes up. Though they say he’s looking after railroad business. Jobs going to be opening up soon.”

“How come you’re down here and not at the site?”

“Nothing more to be done. I’m short of lumber. Third time we’ve run clean out of one thing or another and had to wait while he ordered it up from Kansas City.”

“Has he got trouble paying?”

“Not so’s I can see. Payroll’s always on time whether work’s proceeding or not. Say, speaking of the hotel, I’d watch out for that drummer, the one selling the pots and pans. His nose is broke and his new hat wrecked and he says he’s gonna get you.”

“Well, I got his Dragoon,” I said, and I hauled the gun out and laid it on the table.

Tim nodded. “All the same, keep an eye out. Your sweetheart Katie Bender says he’s talking pretty big about it.”

“She’s not my sweetheart, for Christ’s sakes.”

“Also he’s telling everybody and his brother that he fucked your missus.”

“Ah, shit. Guess I’d better get back after him.” No matter what Tiny said, letting such an affront go unpunished was a considerably bigger mark against my name than the stigma attached to the violent settling of a score.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Nobody believes what a drummer says, bragging the way they do.”

“Besides,” Cornan said, “the whole town knows about your wife pleasuring that hired man. No offense.”

“They do?” I’d been under the impression that Ninna’s liaison with Garth was a well-kept secret.

Tim nodded. “Well, sure, old Juno told everybody as he was leaving town. He was pretty sore at you for firing him.”

“Can you mind the till for a few minutes? I already lost two hours worth of business this afternoon.”

“For two shots of rye I will.”

“That’s fine. I shouldn’t be long.”

Tim leaned into the bar and I put my coat back on and walked up the street to the hotel, where the boy at the desk looked up at me without surprise.

“If you’re looking for Mr. Harticourt he’s already checked out.”

“That the drummer with the hole in his bowler?”

“The one that says he’s had knowledge of your wife, yes sir.”

“When did he leave?”

“An hour or so ago. Left with Katie, heading out for Fort Scott. Probably going to stay at the Bender place overnight.”

I couldn’t hold back a laugh at that. “That’s pretty brazen.”

“No sir, they put travelers up for the night somewhat regular, and she thought her old mother might be wanting some pots and pans.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “He’s gonna give her the business just like he did my wife, only Kate’ll probably charge him for the privilege.”

At that the boy rose from behind the desk and made a fist, his eyes wide and watery. “You take that back, mister.”

I laughed again. “All right, you win. Miss Bender’s only concern is for the poor drummer making his sales quota for Labette county.” I felt some pity for the lad as I left; he was sixteen or seventeen, and his dreams of the lovely and otherworldly Kate were no doubt things of frail, crystalline beauty, liable to shatter at the slightest cynical word.

My first thought was to mount up and ride out to the Bender place, the saloon be damned. Once out there I would thrash the drummer; I might also take his fur coat, and his money, which probably didn’t amount to more than the change for the twenty dollar gold piece. That last would of course depend on the presence of the Bender menfolk, who didn’t know me particularly, and whether or not they were inclined to come to the man’s aid. I didn’t think they’d begrudge me at least the beating, though, once I’d explained the circumstances.