Power in the Blood (118 page)

“The hell you say! Why, I intended hunting those two down one time for the glory of it.”

“You never would’ve caught them, Zeebub, but they would’ve caught you sniffing around and had your balls in your mouth before you could blink. They were crazy in the head, those two, but they weren’t always that way.”

“You knew them before?”

“I surely did, that’s why they spared me.”

He told Clay about the mission at San Bartolomeo, and the events there that took him eventually to Galveston.

“That’s the wildest story I ever heard. Is all of this true, Bones?”

“True as my name’s John Bones. Wait up there; it’s truer than that. My real name’s Dugan, but it got changed when I got adopted back when I was small; not changed to Bones—hell no. I picked that for myself at San Bartolomeo and kind of stuck with it, like it was a good luck charm, I guess. Care to tell me your real name? It sure as hell isn’t Zeebub, now is it. Zeebub, are you all right? Hey, Zeebub.”

“What’s your first name?” Clay asked, his voice flat.

“Andrew. They called me Drew, though. Listen, don’t tell Fay I’m not called Bones. I just know she’d be mad at me over it, you know how women always want you to share every little thing.”

“What’s the name of the folks that adopted you?”

“What for? I never called myself by their name after they died.”

“The name,” said Clay, his voice almost a groan.

“Kindred. Morgan and Sylvie. That was back in Illinois.”

“This Kindred, was he dark-haired, with religion?”

“He had God so deep inside him he walked funny. Religion’s what took us down to where Smart Crow found me. She died there, Sylvie did, and Kindred too.”

“You saw him die?”

“Well, the last time I laid eyes on him he was walking around the wagon and spouting from the Bible like a crazy man. How’d you guess he had religion?”

“Pass me that jug, Drew boy, and let me tell you more about yourself, even further back than Illinois. The Kindreds got you off the orphan train, didn’t they, and you got on that train back in Albany, just down the road from Schenectady, you and Zoe and me.”

“You? You were on that train? You’re joshing me.…”

“I was there.…”

“What’s your name, goddamn it, Zeebub? Maybe I can recall.…”

“Did I change that much? Don’t you know me, Drew? Must be the way my face is nowadays, the scars and all.…”

“Clay …?”

“The same.”

It was the noise outside that made Fay open the door. Dugan and Bones were rolling together beneath the trees nearby, fighting, it seemed. She knew it must have been Dugan who started it, not Bones.

“What are they doing?” asked Zoe, hearing the commotion now that the door was open.

“Fighting. Can you make him stop, Dugan … Zeebub, I mean? He’s the one started it I bet. He’ll listen to you.”

Zoe thought Fay was addressing her when the name Dugan was uttered, and wondered how she knew her maiden name. She went outside with Fay beside her.

“I don’t think they’re fighting.… They’re laughing!”

“Oh, they’re blind drunk, the both of them.”

“Best leave them alone. Men will be men.”

“Boys, more like it.”

They returned to the cabin. Omie had fallen asleep behind the blanket an hour before, still not herself, still silent. Zoe sat and looked at Fay. “How did you know my name was Dugan?” she asked.

“I didn’t say it was. Your name’s Brannan.”

“But it used to be Dugan. What made you say it, Miss Torrey?”

“I didn’t.”

“Excuse me, Fay, but I’m sure I heard you. May I call you Fay? It seems silly to keep on being so formal, the situation here being what it is.…”

“I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything.”

Zoe could tell Fay’s denials would only become more adamant if she persisted. Fay’s lie was obvious, yet Zoe could not understand why it was necessary. She tried to recall the context in which that one word had stood out so, and after a moment’s concentration, realized Fay had been referring to B. L. Zeebub.

“So his name is Dugan,” said Zoe, “the same as mine once was. I don’t see why you felt you needed to hide it from me, Fay. I knew his name couldn’t possibly be as foolish as he’d have us believe.”

“I didn’t say it was Dugan! I didn’t!”

“Very well. I seem to have upset you, and I apologize.”

“I just didn’t say it, that’s all. I’m not upset.”

“No. Well, I believe I’ll ask those drunken men to share the joke with us women. Would you care to know what it is that makes them act like schoolboys?”

“No.”

Zoe stood up and went to the door, aware at every step that Fay’s eyes were following her. The sense of relief she felt when the door closed behind her was like stepping into cool shade after the heat of the noonday sun. She did not know why Fay should have taken a dislike to her so abruptly, nor why she should insist on holding to her lie. Perhaps B. L. Zeebub was drunk enough to enlighten her. The men had separated, and were lying with their backs against a tree, catching their breath. She could smell the liquor on them as she approached.

“Mr. Zeebub, I wish to have a word with you if I may.”

“Ma’am?”

“Mr. Zeebub, is your name Dugan, by any chance? I ask only because that happens to have been my maiden name.”

Both men stared at her, then at each other. Zoe became irritated by the dumbfounded expressions on their faces, a look so broadly incredulous she could detect it by moonlight.

“Well, Mr. Zeebub? May I expect a reply before sunup?”

“No …,” said Clay, his voice like a sigh.

“No?”

“No, I mean …”

“Zoe?” asked Drew. “Zoe?”

“Are you Zoe?” Clay asked also.

“Certainly. I didn’t tell you so?” she asked Drew.

“No, no … you didn’t.”

“Zoe Dugan …” Clay sighed.

Zoe was startled to see tears dribbling down his ugly face. Liquor was disgusting stuff if it made grown men behave in so ridiculous a fashion.

“And yours?” she asked, a little testily now. “Is it Dugan or is it not?”

“Zoe … it’s me, Clay.”

“Clay?”

“And me, Zoe … I’m Drew,” said her brother.

“What are you saying …? You both are quite shamefully drunk.…”

“Zoe, it’s
us!
It’s really
us
.…”

“No. Stop this!”

Clay attempted to rise, and fell over his long legs. Zoe stepped back from him. Drew sat with a smile of serendipity on his handsome face, a smile directed at Zoe, who felt as if she had somehow blundered into an asylum populated by cruel but prescient madmen.

“It’s us, Zoe, truly … Mr. Pigeontoes and Mr. Duckfeet!”

The ludicrous names from so many yesterdays ago hit her hard. The drunken men at her feet were declaring themselves to be her brothers, her wonderful brothers of long ago, but they could not be, could not possibly be Clayton and Drew, never, not these two with their jug and their whiskey smell and slurred beseechment in their voices.

“She doesn’t believe it,” said Drew.

“I don’t blame her,” said Clay. “It’s not possible … you and me … then us and her. It couldn’t happen, not this way.…”

“But it did, Zoe, it did happen!” Drew was on his feet, surprising himself with the sudden lurch up from the ground. He wavered for a moment, then straightened himself and said, “Zoe, it’s truly me, and he’s Clay. Look at us! Remember the train? You were the first one to go, back there in …”

“Indiana …,” said Zoe, belief coming to her now in small ripples of acceptance. “But how can this have happened …?”

Drew shrugged, and pulled so exaggeratedly comical a face he made Clay laugh, and Zoe found herself laughing also, a nervous, skittering laugh that tripped glancingly across the improbabilities, the sheer impossibilities standing between the likelihood of such a reunion, at this time and place. All three had been utterly ignorant of one another, and then, in a trice, were laughing and crying and believing, accepting the bumptious miracle wrought, it seemed, by whiskey’s loquacious tendency and whatever etheric stirrings the finger of fortune had contributed. It was them. They were hers, part of her missing flesh and blood returned to her. She felt her head might explode, and realized the thing swelling her from within like a balloon was joy, simple and unstoppable, eager to be let free.

She took several steps toward her brothers, and Drew put his arms around her thin shoulders. Clay found his feet and lunged at them with opened arms, so tall he swept them both up and held them tight. Zoe was ashamed of the mewling sound coming from her throat, but could not make it quit. The men lost to her were brought back. Brothers and sister, they stood together, their bodies held closer than the embrace of any husband or wife or lover, and they continued standing so until their heads leaned even closer, and they inhaled the breath of their other selves and wept.

51

For two days they talked, holding back nothing of themselves. Clay told for the first time of his experiences hunting down the killer mistakenly known as Slade in the desert, and of Omie’s unwitting help in keeping him alive; Omie herself had no memory of it, and remained silent throughout most of the three-way exposition filling the cabin. Drew was stunned to learn that Kindred had not only survived but gone on to search for the human soul, first with a foolish machine, then with a hatchet.

Zoe confessed to having murdered a man who attempted to rape her on the trail across Missouri, and wished she had done the same to the man who gave her Omie. “Don’t feel so bad,” Clay told her. “I burned down his barn.” She admitted also to having married Leo Brannan while being unsure if Bryce Aspinall still lived. “He’s dead now, though,” she added, and showed them the tattered newspaper clipping sent by her anonymous friend in Glory Hole. “I believe it was Leo who arranged it. He sent someone to kill us both in Durango.”

“Does he know a fellow by the name of Jones in Denver?” Clay asked.

“I have no idea who his acquaintances are.”

Clay apologized to Zoe before stating that he and Fay had been hired to steal Omie away from her, using Fay’s line of contact with Drew. Zoe said, “Leo has not expressed any interest in Omie for a long time, since she isn’t his by blood. No, this man Jones must want her for other reasons.”

“Well, he won’t get her,” said Drew, “and he won’t get you either, not with Clay and me standing in between.”

Delving into the finer details of their biographies, Clay learned that Drew had been among the visitors to the cabin in Wyoming where the Bentine brothers hid from the law and met their deaths at the hands of Lodi’s outfit.

“God Almighty,” said Clay. “We were within talking distance of each other when I snuck down to look through the window there.”

Everyone laughed over the fact that Drew had attempted to take Zoe’s ring during the Buena Vista holdup, and been prevented from doing so by Omie, who was called “my little watchdog” by Zoe for her defense against Leo’s hired killer in a dress.

Feeling somewhat left out by so much revelation, Fay stated again that she had not betrayed Lodi, and had only joined forces with Clay under the direction of the mysterious Mr. Jones because she wanted to see Drew again. “I just can’t get used to not calling you Bones anymore.”

They discussed over and over the simple things that had separated them, and the complex things that had drawn them together again, and when the intertwining of their lives was fully comprehended, the Dugans were faced with deciding if it had been the workings of destiny, or sheer coincidence that effected the reunion; if just one small incident in any one of their lives had been different, the chances of their coming together as they had would have been impossible. It was the biggest question of them all, and the most imponderable.

“It happened the way it happened,” said Clay at last, on the afternoon of the second day, “and we ought to be thankful it did, that’s all.”

“So now we have to ask—what next?”

Zoe understood Drew’s comment; should they stay where they were and await the coming of Lodi, or should they leave and begin again, as a family, in some other place far from Colorado. She had told them of the money sequestered in a safe place, almost a million dollars, more than enough to support them for life, and yet she wished to stay and administer further vengeance on Leo, for his betrayal of her and his attempts at murder by proxy.

“He has not suffered an appropriate loss,” she said, “and I intend that he should. I don’t expect assistance from anyone, if they don’t wish to play a part in what I have planned. That will be Lodi’s job, if he accepts it.”

“We’re in it too,” Drew assured her, but Clay was silent. He was being asked, despite Zoe’s assertion to the contrary, to participate in a train robbery. He had spent all his adult life in furtherance and loose application of the law, and punishment for those who broke it. He did not imagine he was himself a perfect man, a moral exemplar above reproach, but he had never broken the law. Now his newly restored sister expected it of him, by way of a family obligation to redress the wrongs that had been perpetrated upon her. It was Zoe’s fight, Zoe’s cause, but he could not shrug off his own responsibility for a choice. Choosing right over wrong was implicit in his view of the world. Leo Brannan was a despicable man, and a robbery committed at his expense was probably no grievous ethical transgression, if posited within the larger picture, but the dilemma confronting him caused Clay several minutes of moral anguish. Law versus family: it was as simple as that. They were all waiting for his answer, but he could not give it, not yet.

“Think I’ll take a stroll before sundown,” he said, and went outside to be alone.

The pines were moving softly in a cool breeze, the whisper of their needles calming. Clay walked among them, debating with himself the course of action or inaction he should pursue, but no resolution came to mind that was not swept away again by powerful arguments opposing it. He attempted to solve the impasse by standing still, but that gave him no deliverance at all, and so he walked on, weighing his options—there were only two, as distinct as black and white—and asking himself for guidance, since he did not believe in seeking it from God.