Sundance (21 page)

“He'll be fine,” said Longbaugh. “Nothing broken.”

She took one of the towels and reached for his face. He flinched, his startled head jerking backward, but she persisted and he held his ground and let her come. The towel met his cheek and she wiped his face. He saw blood on the towel when she took it away.

“You're not cut,” said Han Fei's auntie, inspecting his skin. “Someone else's blood.”

“Ah,” he said stupidly, and wondered whose. “You should probably take those inside.” He again tried to leave.

“George speaks of you.”

“George?”

“My nephew.”

“His name is George?”

“George Washington Chen. My sister—his mother—wanted him to be as American as possible. Did he not tell you his name?”

“He said Han Fei.”

“Han Feizi? He called himself Han Feizi, the philosopher?”

“Uh, no, just Han Fei.”

“The
zi
is a title, it means ‘master.'” She laughed to herself. “Very like George, he wouldn't presume to have earned that title. And so like contrary George to go the other way, all the way back to China.”

“I don't understand.”

“He was born here, so he is American. But he struggles in school. My guess is he wanted a name with strength.”

“Wait, struggles? He's smart as an owl.”

“The children tease him for being a Chinese named after the first president.”

“And this Han Fei was strong? Sorry, Feizi.”

“You would not understand. It is Chinese.”

“Try.”

“Legalism.”

“You're right. I don't understand.”

“Han Feizi believed people were bad, evil by nature, and you need harsh laws to control them. He was very harsh himself.”

“George is a strange little guy.”

“How did he get hurt?”

“Too close to a bomb.”

“Your bomb?”

“No.”

“Someone trying to kill you?”

“No.”

“I see.” She gave that some thought. “Why did you bring him back?”

“You mean why did a white man bring a Chinese boy all the way back to Chinatown?”

She held her ground and looked for the answer in his face.

“I like him,” said Longbaugh.

Han Fei's auntie thought about that for a moment. “I will tell George. What you did.”

“Tell him good-bye,” said Longbaugh.

“But you said you like him.”

“I can't have his help anymore.”

“He will be disappointed.”

“It's too dangerous.”

“I thought you said the bomb wasn't for you.”

“It was because of me.”

She nodded. “I see.”

“He needs to heal and go on to his own fights.”

“I'll tell George, but I'll say it better, so that he can hear it,” she said, and went inside with the bandages and towels.

He walked away from the bright blue door and left Chinatown behind.

His grief and gloom were replaced by anger. Hightower had had him followed, and a smarter move he had never made, removing himself from the situation. Longbaugh now wondered about his own intelligence, if he had ever been smart enough to take the fight to the city. He was steeped in doubt, his side burning, his left ear still logy from the blast.

Despite being dogged by his grief, he now began to convince himself she had not been in there. He had initially believed she was there because that was what he wanted. In the aftermath, by blaming himself for rushing to see her and thereby letting himself be followed, he believed he deserved to lose her, which helped convince him she was dead. The dynamite furthered his conviction, as if Moretti's unambiguous use of violence added to the proof. Why blow her up if it was someone else? But now, in reflection, it seemed possible E was not Etta. All his proof was emotional, based on his anguish and sense of responsibility. He knew he had to go back. He caught a passing glimpse of himself in reflection and returned to the store window. His clothes were dirty from the blast, but his face was clean, and he wondered why until he remembered Han Fei's auntie.

He hired a cab and asked for the Brooklyn morgue, and the driver looked at him as if he were simple and took him to Bellevue. Once there, he found a bureaucrat who seemed to be in charge. The man was disgusted by the lackadaisical way in which things were run and told Longbaugh that no one wanted to work there, so they had hired alcoholics to process and handle corpses. Longbaugh realized he wasn't joking. The man went through paperwork, but found nothing about a Brooklyn woman in an explosion. He told Longbaugh that, considering the way things were, it was likely the body had yet to be transported.

He returned to the bridge and boarded a train one more time, to the
other side of the East River, then found his way to E's street, currently blocked to traffic. Children no longer cried, dogs no longer barked, and women no longer screamed. The police lingered but appeared to have completed their investigation. Firemen moved in and out of the damaged building, and the scorched facade dripped. Locals made clean spaces on the street with their small brooms and narrow dustpans, and he imagined, at that rate, it would be some time before the block was clear of debris. The hanging laundry was all new and clean, and any destroyed clotheslines were already being replaced. He did not see Phyllis. He walked among them as if he belonged. No one looked at him.

He entered the building's gutted entry and climbed the stairs, stepping carefully to find solid footing, avoiding rubble and mangled banisters. Halfway up, he looked back to the place where the pimpled boy had lit the dynamite to throw at her door on the second-floor landing. His eyes tracked its flight to where her front door had been. The walls were soaked, the ceiling dripped, the smell of acrid smoke and fire mingled with sodden wood and plaster. He stood beside where the dynamite had detonated. He made his way into the room. Police and firemen had been there but were now gone. He crossed through a smaller room into the main room where the windows to the street had been blown out. Just under the missing glass, a body was covered with a blanket. He approached it. He peeled back the blanket to see if there was anything to identify. Flies rose around his nose and eyes, and he blinked and waved at them until they dispersed.

Her eyes were half open, with one side of her face flattened and gelatinous, but intact enough to be identifiable. At the moment of the blast, she had been turned away, partly protected by an inner wall. The officials had laid her on a wood plank. He could see that her back had been scorched and pitted by explosive debris. A snug halo of crinkled, singed hair shaped her face, with a small smudge on her chin and another on her nose. He looked at her from every angle, as if the first glance had been an illusion, that somewhere in these unfamiliar features dwelled the face of his wife. But she was not to be found, as here was Eunice or Elizabeth or Edith or Eleanor, not Ethel Matthews Place.

He left the second floor without being stopped by police or firemen. He left the building and left the area through the roadblocks the way he had come, ignored as if he had belonged there in the first place, forgotten as if he had never been there at all.

He returned to Manhattan. He felt none of the elation he had experienced when he learned Etta had survived the Triangle fire. He did not know where to file his personal responsibility for E's death. He did not even know her name.

The lonely darkness remained with him, despite the fact that it had not been Etta.

He was not ready to confront Hightower. He didn't know if he could control himself. He walked, not aware of how far he had already walked that day, not noticing the ache in his side or the blisters on his feet. He did not know how long he walked before he came upon a bar with a name that caused him to stop. After he read and reread the sign to be sure he was not mistaken, he came very close to smiling. Here was an astounding coincidence. He entered the place as if it was a beacon from his past as well as an invitation to drown his immediate future. The name had meaning only to him, as it had likely been intended to celebrate the obscurity of the location. He was surprised to find it clean and modern. He sat alone at a table in the back, as far from the other patrons as possible. The first glass of liquor did not dull his brain as quickly as he hoped, and he ordered a second and waited for senselessness.

A man came in and sat at the next table in the chair directly behind Longbaugh. Longbaugh paid him no mind. He was in the grip of whiskey by then, and although the man had a familiar look, Longbaugh did not at that moment fully trust his instincts. He also did not trust his ears when the man said, “Hello, Harry.”

The voice was familiar, too familiar to be real. He considered, ran it through his aural memory, and chose to ignore it.

“Harry,” the man said again, and this time Longbaugh turned in his seat to look over his shoulder.

“Of course,” said Longbaugh when he recognized him. He laughed softly, shaking his head in wonder. The darkness lifted.

“I thought you'd get around to coming here once you saw the name,” said the man who had called him Harry.

“It was pure dumb luck that I found it. Wait, you didn't name it yourself, did you? Do you own this place, the new Hole in the Wall? Just like you to thumb it at them.”

“I don't do that anymore. I dumb-lucked into it just like you. Started coming here the last few months. Had half an eye out for you. Thought you might wander in.”

“Slow down, how'd you even know I'd come east?” Longbaugh turned his chair so they were sitting side by side, looking out at the room.

“Didn't. Not saying I expected you, I just imagined it so often that I started to believe it. Then I was on the street and overheard two geniuses trying to outscare each other about some ghost they'd seen, said he had a fast gun and deliberate manner—probably not their exact words—one body, one bullet, and cool as rain in the Rockies. I knew it could only be you. Not a more obvious signature if you'd autographed their ears.”

“You being the one guy who knew I wasn't dead.”

“The very one.”

“So all this time I've wondered, who the hell did they shoot down there?”

“You mean if it wasn't us.”

Longbaugh grinned. “Yeah, if it wasn't us.”

“You didn't know 'em. Coupla prairie dogs in the wrong country in the wrong decade, wasn't worth the lead to bring 'em down. Although it worked out all right for you and me.”

“Were they playacting, trying to be us?” Longbaugh was remembering Sandy the cook and his friend John.

“Nope. Just a couple of bank-robbing fools from Oklahoma. The locals heard we were in country, so if an American picked his nose, it had to be us. They're romantic that way.”

Longbaugh shook his head, grinning idiotically at his friend. “Robert Leroy Parker.”

Parker grinned back. “Harry Alonzo Longbaugh. When's the last time we saw each other?”

“Union Pacific to Salt Lake City. Sorry, on
top
of a Union Pacific Pullman parlor car on the way to Salt Lake City.”

“It was after that.”

“No, they had me after that.”

“You gave yourself up, they didn't have you. And it was while you were being transferred to the courthouse.”

“I didn't see you.”

“There was a moment it was just you and a deputy. I had a mount ready. Why didn't you slip the cuffs?”

“Same reason I let them take me.”

Parker waited.

“The whole thing was a crap run of luck,” said Longbaugh. “I was coming back to Etta, turned the horse in at the livery, I didn't notice the blanket slide off the Union Pacific money bag, and these boys rode in and saw it. Turned out they were with the posse that had just given up on us. Suddenly there were a cool dozen of them looking at the bag and looking at me.”

Parker shook his head. “Crap luck, all right.”

“I could see Etta in the big window of the hotel, and she knew. Was about to make a fuss, so I gave myself up.”

“They didn't recognize you? Just saw the bag?”

Longbaugh shrugged. “Gave them a false name.”

“And you didn't mention me.”

“Never came up.”

“They
never
found out your real name?”

“Never bothered to check. And none of the old lawmen were there to tell them different. Booked me under Alonzo, tried me under Alonzo, and wrote it down in the ledger at Rawlins. Rawlins was brand new that year, they were busy getting the place up and running, and bringing all the prisoners over from Laramie. Nobody looked at me twice, I was caught in the shuffle. Bureaucracy can be your friend.”

Parker was amazed. “You did it to protect her.”

“Long as they didn't know me, they couldn't know about her.”

“Newspapers kept reporting that we were still riding together. Couldn't figure out where they got that.”

“They're romantic that way.”

Parker thumped the table with his fist in amusement. He took a swallow from his glass.

Parker turned contemplative. “It changed after that. Got harder. Railroads got madder, went after the gang like they meant it. Got so frustrated, I came up with a crackpot theory about running to South America. Pretty soon it got so bad, it didn't seem so crackpot anymore.”

“So you really went down there.”

“And was living a perfectly respectable life.”

“I am interested in your definition of ‘respectable.'”

“I swear, Harry, I was on my best behavior. Then word came we were dead. Now that was interesting. I figured they might stop looking for us, long as I didn't happen to lift my skirt in front of them. Seemed like a pretty good time to leave South America.”

“I love it when you lift your skirt.”

“But before I left I went and visited the town where we died. Now, that's a thing to do. The whole time I felt like a wandering spirit. Seemed like my head was floating a couple feet over my body, like no one could see me. Hard to explain.”