The Kept (16 page)
She understood why Caleb had gone to the Elm Inn. For Owen Trachte could only have grown into the type of man that associated with thieves and killers, exactly the type of man Caleb hoped to find. Somewhere in the sound of the bells chiming, chips falling, cards shuffling, matches striking, men yelling, and glasses breaking, she could hear his laugh. It had not changed. It, too, carried a tinge of violence. She fled from the building, dropping whatever money she had into the giant man’s hands on the way out.
T
he week passed quickly. More often than not, Elspeth vomited in the morning from the intensity of her soreness. But she grew used to the constant dull pain in her arms and the searing heat in her chest, and became unaware of their comings and goings. She and Charles developed a comfortable rhythm, despite his frequent tardiness to work and strange silences. Owen Trachte had not reappeared, and she convinced herself that he wouldn’t be able to see past time and her disguise to recognize her. Yet the expectation of punishment stayed with her always.
On Saturday, Elspeth bought a dusty used suit from the tailor in town. She couldn’t let him take her measurements—she said she was in a hurry—and so the suit did not fit well: It drooped from her shoulders like a wilted flower, but fit snugly on her hips when the jacket was buttoned. She hadn’t realized how much she’d enjoyed the freedom of a dress prior to the last few days. Pants were constricting to her, and she had altered her way of walking, keeping her steps short and choppy, as if she always trod on the ice beneath the crane.
Sunday morning, she took a well-needed bath. The tub was ringed with dirt and she filled it again with clean water and washed a second time. Her hair refused to believe she was a man and she cut it with a straight razor and a pair of scissors she borrowed from Frank.
The process of bandaging her wounds had become less arduous and less gruesome. Scabs had knitted their way over the punctures. She applied a foul-smelling salve purchased—along with her own pair of gloves—at the mercantile and wrapped herself in bandages, tight enough that her breasts were no longer visible. A small dab of shoe polish wiped along her chin and jaw and washed away gave the faint impression of a possible beard. The tie took most of her time. She’d asked the tailor if he knew of a good way to teach a young boy the various knots, and the tailor had kindly given her a small pamphlet with drawings showing each step with looping arrows that represented the movements. Even so, it took her half an hour before the tie looked presentable. At last, she pulled on the suit jacket, leaving it unbuttoned.
She didn’t ask Caleb to accompany her to church. She had always assumed Jorah knew the reason for Caleb’s lack of God, but she’d never asked. Perhaps next week, when she could describe the service to him, she would ask why he’d waited outside—even in rain or snow—until they’d finished their prayers and why he would stare at his plate or his shoes when Jorah recited scripture.
Her clean skin tingled in the cold air. She tromped along the walkway, the boards echoing under her boots—shoes being too expensive but the boots cleaned and shined until the leather looked presentable—alongside others dressed in their best approximation of finery, something always amiss: a dirty cheek, a torn jacket, pants too large, shirt too small. In the other direction came the sodden; one drunk weaved close enough to Elspeth that she held out her arms to fend him off, the loose sleeves of her suit flailing, but he veered away at the last second. She wondered how many had spent their night and their money at the Elm Inn.
At the end of the green, the church glowed in the early morning sun, white and radiant. The golden cross shined with a godly luster, and the townspeople marched toward it like columns of ants. Elspeth followed the man in front of her into the church, down the aisle, and into a pew. The bench whined under their weight. Inside the church was bigger than it appeared outside, forty feet from ceiling to floor. On either side of the pews, stained-glass windows depicted the stories of the Bible: Noah and the flood, Moses and the burning bush, the beheading of John the Baptist, and the transformation of water into wine. She found comfort in their presence, recollecting Jorah’s voice reciting the tales. The air heated with the congregants, who huddled in the front pews while the rear of the church remained empty. A balcony provided more unneeded seating. The organ began to play the processional and this calmed her enough that she shut her eyes. She sensed the choir, the deacons, and the minister shuffle past on the aisle.
A hand clasped her shoulder. Charles had made his way down the pew. People squeezed and shifted, and Charles sat pressed against her. “Morning, Jorah” was all he could say before the minister, an older man with intense green eyes, took the pulpit. Elspeth could smell the alcohol on Charles’s breath, but he watched the minister with great concentration.
Throughout the service, she stole glances at Charles—his skin peeling from the wind and cold, his beard tangled—but if he noticed, he avoided her gaze and maintained his focus on the pulpit. During a sermon that detailed the travels of the three kings, and the hardships one must endure to reach a destination, it was as though God talked to her in particular. When the minister stabbed the air with a finger to emphasize a point, she felt put upon, attacked. Charles grasped her hand. His quick pulse thudded against her fingers.
H
IS MOTHER LEFT
Caleb a sheet of paper with a crude drawing of a church on it. His family used to sit in the main room while Jorah read from the Bible, his demeanor changing from peaceful to hostile as the day progressed. When Caleb had stopped attending, Jorah had said nothing, though he saved chores one could do alone and Caleb spent the day working.
Frank was not at the front desk of the Brick & Feather and Wilkes always eyed him with suspicion, so Caleb ate breakfast alone. The eggs were tough and cold, and the bacon had been overcooked as well, crumbling in his fingers. When he finished, he slipped his hat on low, and stepped out into the busy world.
Frank had told Caleb that the only things open on Sunday—Caleb knew he would avoid mention of the Elm Inn—were the Brick & Feather, the church, and the mercantile, which was run by Jews. Caleb didn’t think he’d ever seen a Jewish person before and peered through the windows. A boy his age swept the floors. He looked normal, if a bit adult, dressed in an apron and neat clothing. A bell rang over Caleb’s head when he passed through the door. He slipped down one of the aisles so he could watch the boy at his work. The owner of the store, who sometimes ate breakfast at the hotel, a thickly moustached man with bulging arms and stout shoulders—in direct contrast to the long and elegant building that housed his home and his livelihood—stood behind the counter, writing notes in a catalogue. He wiped his moustache with a napkin. Caleb knew at first glance that this was the boy’s father—the boy was a moustacheless, smaller version of him. All the children, all of Caleb’s brothers and sisters, had looked different. When Caleb saw Elspeth, he saw some of himself. Jorah, on the other hand, bore no resemblance to Caleb whatsoever. Nor to his siblings.
He walked purposefully to the display of pistols and ammunition. He studied the guns. The man noticed Caleb, cleared his throat, put the catalogue under the counter, and walked slowly toward him.
“In the market for a pistol, son?”
The word caused Caleb a slight pang. He looked from the man to his son and knew beyond a doubt that whatever Jorah Howell had been, he had never been his father. “I need a gun.”
“How about the Colt?” the man said. “A fine pistol. Very fine.” He removed one of the revolvers from the case and flipped open the cylinder. He handed Caleb the gun grip first. “I have to warn you, even a used Colt pocket thirty-two, which is what you have in your hands, is going to cost you almost ten dollars. Right now we’re running short on the Army model—it’s our most popular pistol—but that’s twelve dollars, new. No one ever sells us back a used Army model. Do they, Seth?”
Caleb couldn’t look at them, father and son, to see how the boy answered. The pistol was heavy, substantial, and as clean as if it had never been touched by human hands. Caleb saw how filthy his fingers were and blushed. He clicked the cylinder into place and aimed down the barrel of the gun at a bag of oats at the other end of the store. He placed the Colt back onto the glass case and rattled the money in his pocket. He had just over two dollars.
“May I ask how old you are? Maybe you’d like to come back with your father.”
Caleb caressed the gun, but didn’t pick it up again. “I hoped to buy it as a Christmas present. For my father.” It surprised him how easily the lie came; it had jumped up from his throat like a hiccup. Before Caleb had slept in the barn, before he’d become the caretaker of the animals, during the bleary, sleepless nightmare days, Amos had taken one of the feathers Caleb kept in his pocket and scampered from the loft and toward the house, saying he was going to tell their father that Caleb was playing with girl’s things. Caleb had slid down the ladder after him, but by the time he reached the barn door, Amos had almost made it inside the house, so Caleb, without thinking, picked up a rock and threw it. It sailed willfully toward the kitchen window, made a neat hole in one of the panes and landed, apparently, next to Emma, who’d been seated on the floor, painting a face on a corn-husk doll. Caleb had sprinted back into the barn, and disappeared into the darkness of a cow stall, where he hid between two of the giant beasts that regarded him with sidelong glances and absentminded chewing.
He heard his father’s footsteps, moving with the same inevitable will as the rock, coming closer and closer. The cows—who didn’t yet know Caleb as they soon would—betrayed him and moved to the edge of the stall, thinking they were about to be fed, leaving him standing alone. He fumbled with the latch.
“Caleb,” Jorah said. Only a few weeks prior, Caleb had hiked to that square plot of land cloaked by gnarled moosewood, the newly turned earth smelling of spring, the murder fresh in his mind, and he didn’t know which version of his father would appear to him: The one that regarded him with sadness or the one that set upon him with anger. Caleb shuffled to his punishment.
“Caleb, why did you throw a rock at your brother?”
Caleb tried to lie. He searched his mind for a good reason, a better reason than the one he had. Instead, he told his father most of the truth. He only omitted that without sleep, he’d been making strange decisions for days, forgetting to give water to the cows, dumping the slop bucket in with the horses. He expected fire and brimstone but his father only quoted, “
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler
.” Jorah waited. “Do you know what that means, Caleb?”
This time he’d lied. He couldn’t face his father any longer and he’d said that he understood and he was sorry. Jorah’s mouth had flapped open and shut a few times, but then he’d breathed out of his nose and simply strode away.
In front of the gun counter, Caleb fumed at how all of his lies seemed to originate from Jorah, a web spinning ever outward. “My father has always wanted a Colt,” he said. “My mother died”—here the shopkeeper covered his mouth with his hand—“and I thought I could do something special for Christmas.” Caleb sweated with wickedness, but he didn’t think he could be good again without these wicked ways and the purpose they were to serve. Moreover, it seemed to him that no one told the truth, and the more time he spent in this large world, the less he felt beholden to do so himself.
“That’s surely understandable,” the man said, and glanced at his son. “We do have a credit policy here. It’s usually only reserved for our long-standing customers.” Beneath his moustache, he smiled. “But you have a trustworthy face.”
A small piece of Caleb, a sliver, wanted to warn the man, wanted his plans to be discovered, to receive his punishment, even as the shopkeeper leaned on the counter and went through the merits of each and every Colt pistol. He told Caleb what kind of game could be taken down with each one. Caleb saw the men again. The gangly one he would shoot like a deer, the bearded one a moose, the smooth, long-haired one a mountain lion. He listened to the descriptions of the guns, and he imagined each in his fist, making up for the failure of a man he’d mistakenly called father.
A
T THE END
of the service, Elspeth and Charles stepped out into the bright light of day. They squinted. New snow made the world ache. “Where’s your wife?” Elspeth said. “Your family?”
Charles scuffed his feet in the snow. Other churchgoers milled about them, tying their scarves around their necks and buttoning their coats. Men draped shawls over women’s shoulders. Charles itched at his beard. “If there was ever a time and place to tell the truth,” he said, then trailed off. “They’ve gone away.”
“Away? When will I get to meet them?”
“They’re visiting her parents. It’s nice, I think, for children to understand their family, where they come from.”
Elspeth agreed. The minister shook hands along his way out of the church, and Charles removed his hat once more. Elspeth reached out to comfort Charles and squeezed his forearm. She had forgotten herself and squeezed harder, in what she hoped was a manly way.
“How about I buy you those gloves now? I’d be happy to. The store’s open.”
Elspeth held up hands covered in new gloves. The leather smelled fresh. She said she’d bring him his old gloves and he told her not to bother. They ran out of conversation. Wind channeled through the graveyard. The snow was stripped from the tops of the graves, leaving them bald and dark against the white backdrop.
“Do you think God can really forgive us our sins?” Charles asked.
“I hope so,” Elspeth said. They faced the rows and rows of headstones, each lost in their own thoughts, Elspeth desperate to be overwhelmed by faith as elusive as the light through the trees.
I
N THE LOBBY
of the hotel, Caleb idly flipped through the pages of a newspaper, unable to read much of it. The Colt pistol he had tucked into his pants at the small of his back. Six bullets occupied the cylinder. He kept another dozen in his pocket. The shopkeeper had been kind enough to sell him a new Colt Army pistol for the price of a used one, and then had insisted on wrapping the gift. As Caleb had ripped the paper and hidden the empty box and the rest of the ammunition underneath his bed, his hands had felt like those of someone else, and the only thing that had returned them to his body was reloading the pistol again and again.