Two-Gun & Sun (31 page)

It was well into the evening, now. Vincent might be wondering where I'd got to, if he was even still there. I hoped so. There was the business to discuss, photographs, a trip to purchase equipment. And while I had every reason to feel glum and uncertain about my reputation, now, the promise of that second edition, or a trip, or both, lightened my step.

The troupe was dismantling the tents, their shouts less exuberant, now, as I rushed past. The players had a few days yet before their next performance in another town. Their pace had become leisurely. I noted the flashes of flesh between robes, their knickers as they bent to pull up trousers. All seemed as usual, except for Ben who stood aside, peering into a wicker basket.

I hated to see them go, and I stopped, briefly, to tell him so.

He shook his head. The matinee is over, he said, our work is done, so it's time we left. What a contagion of a place. Some sort of mining swindle—and you heard about that child? Everyone's talking about it.

Yes—

Yes, well, not just the child, he said. And he offered the basket.

I had checked my watch repeatedly since leaving Meena. I felt as though I was in one of those dreams where, no matter how you tried to hurry, to move, you might as well have been wading through sludge, or glue, each step forward a struggle. I wanted to tell him I would look later. I had things to do. But he was leaving soon and his expression, a mixture of disgust and horror, made me hesitate.

A quick look, then, I decided, followed by a hasty exit. I lifted the top and peered inside. I lowered the lid.

It was a twin to the fish that had sailed belly-up beside me as I walked along the stream, that I found across my doormat and nailed to my door, and finally, floating, in my bowl of soup.

I know, I said. I've seen this before. I wrote about it in the paper, too. Didn't you see it?
Strange Fish
, I called it.

You didn't say it was this strange.

Something—I grasped for what possibly could have created the horned snout and blistered skin on this fish and the others.

I've poked around that creek more than once, he said. It's full of them. I brought this one back for you to see.

The entire creek? I asked.

I pictured the lovely vegetables, the hidden garden, watered by that creek.

No, he said. I was at Wolf's the other night and the fish there looked fine. It has to be something down here. What sort of sorcery is going on in this place? You saw that child. Now this. Which is why we're not sad to go, he said. Nice to meet you, darling. But we're leaving in a couple of hours. I suppose you'll be leaving, too.

I don't think so, I replied.

In truth I had just been thinking about it, a trip to get equipment. But I wasn't so sure anymore, not with all this news going on.

I said, Vincent and I have just produced our first issue. We'll have another to get out, now. All this to write about, and the girl—

I didn't know her name, something I would have to take care of right away, and I was about to tell Ben this, but he took off his bowler, twirled it, then replanted it over his ears, clearly in preparation of speaking.

I saw you at the dinner, he said, the way your printer looked at you, the way you looked back. Pure opera.

Opera?

I could feel my ears burning. What had my face or my words given away? Too much.

Yes, he said, him leaving and all.

Leaving? When?

Oh, my dear, opera indeed.

I didn't hear what else he said. I was running up the street.

From fifty paces I could see the light burning in the shop. This had been a day that had dragged on and I was relieved to be nearing its end, nearing home. He would want to stay when he heard my plans. Why didn't I think of this sooner? A partnership. A real one this time. The sort of connection that would permit a future. We could put all awkwardness behind us, and who knows, who knows? If I wasn't running I might have been able to freeze those thoughts, analyze them. Or maybe I preferred them floating, elusive, inviting any number of possibilities.

I burst into the pressroom, and dropped the newspaper sacks where I stood.

Vincent was staring into the metal mirror. One hand tugged his queue to the side, the other gripped the large blade we had used to cut the newspapers. It took me a moment to realize what he was about to do, and as the metal flashed I cried, No!

I had startled him, and the knife cut just one twist of braid that now sprang loose like the straws of a broom.

If I hadn't taken so long to get here, if I hadn't helped Meena or stopped at the meeting and stayed to interview Silver, if I hadn't talked to Ben, I might have got here sooner.

He reeled around at the sound of my voice. What?

The word stung like a slap. I wanted to say I never minded, but I had, really, at the opera dinner when his queue looked suddenly out of place, wrong. So why would I care if it was gone?

And yet I did care, and in place of logic I felt anger swell, and along with it, all the words I had held back when we were printing the paper. I walked around him, circling him as though I were a schoolyard bully, taunting him, the words spilling freely.

That deputy would love it, you cutting your hair. That crowd would be cheering you right now. This is your grand leader's idea. Isn't it? You're leaving with him and he needs you to look the part.

He held the blade high, across his chest, as though that could stop me. With each revolution, me circling him, and with him following me, I was backing us closer to the press, the machine that had been the focus of our work here, week after week.

I tried a safer question next. And what about Paris? Montreal?

That's not important anymore, he said. I'm going back.

I took a risk with the next question, Is it because of the opera?

His lip turned further down.

This is about China's future. No nationalism, and what have we got? More years under the rule of alien interests—

I'm not asking as the newspaper publisher!

I hadn't meant to shout it. Hadn't meant to admit that, either. But it was out now, and I breathed deeply before continuing.

It was in that role precisely, as a newspaperwoman, that I asked Morris to the opera. He knew about mines and he was my business partner—all right, don't look at me like that, I was wrong. But he was your friend. Maybe I wouldn't have trusted him so much if he wasn't your friend.

It was a low thing to say, putting the blame on him, but desperation had poisoned all sense of dignity. Now I paced back and forth in front of the press that steamed and rumbled through a cleaning of the rollers. Vincent didn't move.

Soon's this is done, he said, I'm off.

Morris will be leaving, too, you know. Pardon me. Two-Gun. He wants to be Sun's bodyguard.

And then I told him how Two-Gun had paid for his investment in the paper. I watched Vincent. I hoped this fact would bring him to my side. I blurted my idea of photography and a future partnership, a real one, this time.

I can't run the business on my own. What am I supposed to do, now? Sell it? Who'd buy it?

The only person I could think of was Parker, out of sheer proximity, and he didn't know a blasted thing about the news business. No, the bank would take it. Mr. Mooney was probably still rubbing his hands after what he heard at that meeting.

I pointed at Vincent's lopsided hair, ridiculously touching.

What about your father? What would he think of what you've just done?

But I knew the answer. If I'd listened to him at all these weeks, I knew it. He had worn the queue to please his father and infuriate the western bosses, but now he had his own concerns, his own politics. To make certain I understood this, he raised the knife and stared, a stare meant to hurt me, as he hacked through the rest of the queue. It fell to the floor while the rest of his hair, freed, hung raggedly like an Indian's.

He'd have to go to a barber now, have it all cut away. Neat. Parted down the middle.

I can also be cruel. I hurled the words at him, Now you'll look like every other man!

I was angry, he was angry, there was no way to fix it, too much said, now, far too much and I was done with talking.

I snatched the knife from his hand before I knew what I was going to do with it, and in one motion that eliminated the awkward metal buttons of my coveralls, grabbed up a shoulder and slit the grey cloth from collar to waist, the dress beneath it as well, even scraping my throat in my haste. Let him see me as a woman, for a change, not a newspaperwoman, not a printer's helper, let him see me as he saw me that time before, on the floor in this same thin chemise. He was going away, what would it matter to him what happened, now? No one could do anything to him, he'd be gone.

He tried to take the blade back but I held on until I could feel the copper eye of the machine pressing against my spine and his weight against me, the iron tangle of wheels and bolts and bars rising above us, around us, daring us, right there against the machine, hissing steam and shuddering, his weight on me and my hands full of him. I didn't hear the blade hit the floor, how could I, overcome by the shaking of the machine, of me, and the sound of his voice, as though he had been saying it all along,
Lila!,
his teeth on my neck, nipple, rib. I ran a hand down his spine, fingers playing each bump as though they were the nubs of braided hair, gone now, as was the man who once wore it. And I could have lost myself right there, allowed myself to sink into swirling grief and regret at that realization, could even have lost the very thing I had sought for so long, and was about to have, and what a fool would I have been then? And so I let go, fingers sprung free from his spine and its rosary of reminders, reached behind instead and gripped an iron limb in each fist, held on tight as he took me, yes, right there against the machine, braced myself to be loved for the first time in my twenty-nine years.

The door had closed and I was on the floor. Scattered about me were the leavings of our love, blade, blood, torn cloth of blue flowers, a severed queue. I stared up at the beast that had shook to life so recently. Vincent was gone, now, and in his absence both of us were stilled. His last act was to shut off the machine, the cleaning done. His hand had lingered by the switch for several moments, his back to me, and then he left.

I tugged at the straps of my chemise, straightened my linens, then rose and climbed into the coveralls that flapped open where they were slit. Only then did I see it, dangling long and finger-like from that switch: the spare key to my shop. And I knew for certain then that he was gone. I stuffed my dress into my pocket, picked up the queue and pressed it to my chest, still sore.

At my desk I pulled out my own set of keys and unlocked the top drawer and laid the braid of hair inside it, next to the two notebooks, their edges worn and pages thick with my notes. There, my head so heavy I could barely lift it, I dragged my eyes over the first book, remembering my first days here. How hopeful I had been, then, and how sorry for myself I felt, now, at moments pathetically boastful, forcing him into an act that at last proved that I had been right, he had wanted me, and then bereft, more at a loss now than I had been before, to know it was over.

As determined as I had been to do what I set out to do, run this newspaper and yes, perhaps, even run the machine that produced it, the fact remained that I would have left with him had he asked me to, without a second thought I would have followed him.

But he didn't ask, it was as simple as that.

I snapped the cover closed, and locked the desk. I could still smell him on my skin when I climbed the steps to my room upstairs, peeled back the coveralls. A bath would fix that, but I didn't want it fixed. I pulled the coveralls back on. I didn't have the heart to search for another outfit. I stuffed the torn dress into the bottom of the closet and then sat by the open window.

What now? I could go off by myself to the city to buy photographic equipment. There must be a book or an operating manual that goes with it. I could learn.

Would anyone in this strange town notice the strangeness of a woman working long hours into the night, red light glowing behind a closed door, the reek of vinegar and acid as photographic images bloomed beneath the liquid surface, ghastly images that would become her sole contentment, until she could decide what else to do?

A flickering of light, then. Flames leapt orange and yellow in the black night, and I shot forward, enlivened, head out the open window, craning my neck. The sight kindled no recollections this time. My head was too full of the present. I smelled the clouds of exhaust and felt the glass trembling and realized that for the second time in the month recorded in my notebooks, motorcycles were roaring around in the dead of night.

They were after Vincent's leader, still.

Vincent—I forgot to warn him. Again.

I leapt up, dug through my jewel box for a simple brooch, and found it in my brother's army pin, jabbed it into my coveralls to close the slit. I fastened a leather belt high up around my middle as further security. I knew without looking that my hair would be askew. Good. Well-loved, that's how I must look. With the spine of my notebook knocking against my knee, I charged down the stairs, pausing only to take up the blade, again, a weapon should one be needed, shoved it into the back of my belt, then out the door.

Citizens were stepping out from alleys and doorways to stand wide-legged in the street, head-lamped and holding blazing torches high. This was an organized search, unlike the mad chase the night of the opera that had brought them no satisfaction. They had learned from that mistake. This time, torches marked the holes in the ground, and I could only assume this was so that the motorcycles could avoid them and continue the chase into the night.

Engines roared from the direction of Lousetown, and I ran around to the back of my building. I had forgotten my headlamp inside, but no matter. More citizens with torches lighted the route. The motorcycles had already reached the pithead and now raced past me, some with headlamps slung over the handlebars for extra illumination, all of them looping around the crackling torches, with men cradling shotguns in the sidecars, their hats fixed as well with miner's lamps, glowing, their tin badges blinking dully from their deputized chests. As each whipped past, my head snapped around to check. But no Vincent. No Sun. Not in the sidecars with guns trained on their temples, not stumbling after, their hands tied, sticks prodding their backs. The posse hadn't found them in Lousetown.