“What happened in the boxcar?” Paul said.
Ledger sneered. He looked out the window.
Paul waited, but after a moment it was clear no answer was coming. “They’re prison guards,” he said. “Save for the girl, we all are. Redmine.”
Ledger laughed. The sound was not of joy, but of sarcasm. The kind of laugh a madman might let out before spitting in the faces of the men dragging him away. “Prison guards?” he said. “You boys couldn’t guard your own acorns.”
“Mind your tongue.”
It was Jeb Crittendon that spoke. He was awake now.
Frank Ledger regarded Crittendon calmly. There it was again—that out of place serenity. It seemed the man was at home with conflict and at odds with peace. When he slept there were nightmares and seizures, when threatened he was tranquil as a monk. “There’s an eternity box in your future, fat man,” he said. “Don’t hasten yourself to it.”
Crittendon slapped Cyrus Lee’s shoulder, jolting him awake. Lee looked around, confused. Crittendon produced his revolver and kept it hidden behind the seatback. Lee saw the revolver and registered the situation. He turned his gaze to Frank Ledger as he reached into his jacket for his knife.
“What I see is one man against three,” Crittendon said, lifting his battered revolver so Frank Ledger could see it, “and two guns against, well, whatever you got. If a man in this here car should be in the market for a coffin, your honor, I’m thinking it’s you.”
Frank Ledger began to reach inside his jacket.
“Enough,” Paul said.
Ledger’s hand stopped moving, save for its tremoring.
For a moment the men remained silent, all eyes unblinking.
The train clacked steadily on.
Sandy slept.
“It’s a few hours to Chicago,” Paul said. “Just keep your peckers in your pants ‘til we can separate ways.”
Frank Ledger nodded. He wiped his hand on his chest, as though he’d been intending that move all along.
Crittendon and Lee relaxed. They put away their weapons.
To Paul, Ledger said, “Meantime, you’ll tell me about the lizard.”
27
Wade reached the last line of crates. There were three of them stacked on top of one another. He put his hands on the topmost crate and stopped. He focused on the wall in front of him as if he were speaking to it, “I can see you there,” he said, then he hefted the crate and carried it to the open door.
Roy stayed motionless, pistol at his side. His stomach was a prune. The knot at the base of his skull began to ache, a dull pain slowly grew and spread out across his neck and head.
Wade came back for the second-to-last crate. Again, looking at nothing and talking to no one, he said, “They make me check for freight-hoppers.” He put his hands on the crate. “I’m supposed to roust you fellas out and kick you in the ass for good measure. Supposed to alert authority so you can learn a little something about being civilized.” He picked up the crate and carried it away.
A voice from outside the car said, “Who you talking to in there?”
Wade handed off the crate and said, “Just one more.” He then crouched down in the open doorway, forearms resting on thighs, gloved hands dangling in the space between his legs.
“Well, hurry up then,” the outside voice said. “Standing around ain’t getting me any closer to bed.”
“Hold on, Bob,” Wade said. “I got an issue here.”
Roy raised his revolver. He aimed it at Wade’s temple from ten feet away. His mind’s eye saw flashes of the day they took him to prison. He recalled looking up at the sky from a roadside ditch where the sideshow had discarded him with their horrible word carved into his chest, plus a note explaining his crime stuffed into his pocket so the law would know what to do. He recalled the constable’s deputies picking him up. After that it was a short ride in a caged cart to Redmine. The cart never actually stopped. It only slowed enough to make the turn and sling him out. The guards at the prison wrapped him in burlap before picking him up, one at each arm. His toes dragged across the hardpan as they walked him beneath the portcullis for registration. He signed his name, as asked to do, and then they dropped him in the hole.
The pain in his head now reverberated through his jaw. His chest tightened. The gun remained surprisingly still. His aim would be true. Wade’s final thoughts would be spelled out in blood and brain matter on the boxcar wall.
Bob said, “What is it?”
“I checked the manifest,” Wade said, “and it showed we have twelve boxes here on seventeen, right?”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “What of it?”
“There’s thirteen.”
There was a beat between them, and then Wade nodded with his eyebrows raised.
“Well c’mon then,” Bob said. “Let’s get this done and get on.”
Wade’s voice fell to a whisper, though loud enough for Roy to hear. “Well, like I said, I got an issue. My guess is the freight-hopper on this here car might not take too kindly to us taking his treasure.”
Another beat passed.
“Is that right?” Bob finally said, menace in his tone.
Roy figured they were used to pounding the tar out of freight-hoppers, and that Bob was likely pounding a fist into his open palm at the moment.
“That’s right,” Wade said. “In fact, he’s got a gun pointed at me right now.”
Roy cocked back the revolver’s hammer. The sound was plenty loud enough for both Wade and Bob to hear.
Bob whistled that same kind of whistle.
“Here’s the thing, though,” Wade said. “Something tells me—I don’t know, call it a hunch—that it might be more important for this here fella to stay on this train than to keep this old chest he don’t need, anyway.”
“You think that’s right?” Bob said.
“I surely do,” Wade said. “And ain’t it funny that we know how this here train won’t be stopping again until just outside of Chicago? A little place called Hyde Park where they need to drop off all them grapes and fine things on twenty-one for some rich boys to have a party with their day-bue-tants.”
“That is funny,” Bob said.
“It is,” Wade said. “And I’m betting this fella might like to know that getting off this here train at Hyde Park would be a cinch, while getting off in Chicago… well, with all their law enforcement and high ideas about what it means to be civilized.”
“It sure wouldn’t be no cinch,” Bob said.
“No cinch,” Wade said.
For the first time Wade looked directly at Roy. Roy could see his courage was only halfway real. If the eyes truly were the windows to the soul, Wade’s soul was flat terrified. Who wouldn’t be with a revolver aimed at their face?
Wade stood. He rubbed his gloved hands together. “I’m gonna take this here last crate,” he said, keeping his eyes on Roy but still talking to Bob. “And then I’m gonna have you come aboard and help me with this chest. That all right?” The question had a dual purpose, one part aimed at Bob, the other at Roy.
“Sounds all right to me,” Bob said.
Roy clicked down the hammer and brought the gun back to his waist. He kicked the final crate and it slid across the boxcar floor until it bumped against Wade’s feet.
Wade smiled.
28
“What do you want to know?” Paul said, now sitting across the aisle from Frank Ledger. He’d heard Ledger’s account of what happened in boxcar seventeen. The man had been surprisingly honest in recounting the event, admitting to being too slow to react to Roy’s movements, admitting to being easily beaten. He explained how he pushed his own brother from the train and then jumped off himself. He was also honest in his intent to bring Roy to justice.
Execution, Paul thought.
Ledger spoke of his intent matter-of-factly, like a man might speak of what he did for a living. Hell, judge or no judge, murder was what Frank Ledger did for a living. Or maybe it was just something to do bec
ause men like Frank Ledger needed something to do. He’d been for the law, and he’d worn a cross, but what did that say? How many lives had been forfeit, and how much blood had been shed in the name of religion? If anything, the cross was a dead giveaway.
“What is he,” Ledger said, “part animal?”
“I don’t think so,” Paul said. “It’s some kind of skin disease put on him at birth. It doesn’t do anything for him but make him look different.”
“That isn’t right,” Frank Ledger said, shaking his head. “He moves like nothing I ever seen. That’s something more than just bad skin.”
Paul shrugged. He had to admit that Roy seemed different than the boy he once knew. Despite his thin body, he seemed stronger and more agile. Like a machine. But there was something else, too. His eyes, even at a distance, showed a different kind of fire than before. Not a fire for adventure, like when he was young, but the smoldering embers of a jaded and unpredictable man.
“Some kind of reptile blood,” Ledger said. He was looking out the window. “Makes him naturally hard where most men are soft.”
“Is that right?” Paul said.
Frank Ledger allowed the hint of a smile across his face. Paul stifled a laugh. He imagined this was about as tickled as Frank Ledger may ever get.
Paul looked at Crittendon and Lee. Both were once again sleeping on benches near the front of the car. Crittendon spilled out over the sides like a sack of guts. Lee was curled up in the corner like a house pet. Sandy was awake now. Still in Paul’s hat, and still with it low on her head, she watched Paul and Ledger from across the train.
Paul smiled at her, nodded.
Sandy glanced fearfully at Ledger.
The man had gone into another seizure. It was milder than the first, but unmistakable. His eyes were like melting glass. His fists trembled. His teeth showed. He emitted a string of small grunts. This went on for thirty seconds, and then, very quietly, it was over. Ledger blinked and composed himself. He went on as if the seizure never happened. “What I mean to say is when his fists touched my chest it was like two cannon balls had hit me. I never saw him coming. He moved like a ghost. And when his head touched my chin, I thought my teeth would explode. There’s armor on him.” He ran his hand over his forearm as if to show where armor plates might go.
Paul nodded. He recalled the events around Roy’s intended burial. How quickly Roy had moved. How his lights were out before he could spit. Maybe Frank Ledger was on to something. Maybe there was animal blood in Roy after all, a mystical gator’s curse.
“I feel sorry for him,” Ledger said.
Paul cocked his head. This wasn’t on Paul’s list of things a scourge like Frank Ledger might say. If there was animal blood in anyone, it was in Ledger—cold, merciless blood that only knew survival. If Roy could be compared to a gator, Frank Ledger was a scorpion.
“I guess he escaped your prison?” Ledger said.
“He did,” Paul said.
“And what was he in for?”
“Killed a man,” Paul said.
Ledger contemplated a moment, and then said, “I never put him there.”
“He was awaiting trial when he escaped.”
Ledger snorted, shook his head. “Wasn’t any trial coming.”
Paul studied Ledger’s face. Up close he could see there was a long scar along the side of this face, nearly hidden by his beard. His eyes were bagged and bloodshot. He had the look of an insomniac. Paul knew the look well; Redmine turned healthy men into insomniacs, prisoners and guards alike. They walked the prison’s cells and halls like marionettes, strung up and teetering on the edge of sanity.
“Nevertheless, justice will be served,” Ledger said.
“Is there such a thing?” Paul said.
Frank Ledger regarded Paul coolly, then his eyes shifted toward Sandy. He watched her, and for a moment Paul thought the man might smile, but he didn’t. “That girl,” he said, “she’s yours?”
“Not by blood,” Paul said.
“But she’s in your care?”
Paul nodded.
“And what would you do, sir, if she were harmed? Call it molestation, rape, or murder. That beautiful child?”
Paul’s heart rose and thumped inside his throat. He considered Sandy, innocent and helpless beneath her tough little facade, now under some man’s brutality. She stared back at him, smiling uneasily, seeming to know they were speaking of her. Frank Ledger was right; Paul would see justice for her under any circumstances. Even at the cost of his life.
Frank Ledger put his hands on the table before him. He spread his fingers wide and drummed them in a rhythmic fashion. His knuckles were bulbous and calloused. Scars crisscrossed everywhere. He’d been a judge, but there was no doubt he’d come up the hard way. Still watching Sandy, he said, “Oh, she may not be your blood, but she’s certainly yours.”
“That salesman on the Colfax road,” Paul said, “did he receive justice?”
Ledger’s eyes sharpened. “Hell you know about that?”
“I found him,” Paul said. “Found your brother, too, bleeding out on the roadside.”
“Still breathing?” Ledger said.
“Just barely.”
“Dead now?”
“Died while I was with him,” Paul said. “Thought maybe I was Jesus, come to save him.”
Frank Ledger looked down at his trembling hands. That unnerving peace was once again in his insomniac eyes, it was all around him. He touched the empty place on his chest, where the silver cross had recently been torn away. He said, “Jesus only saved himself.”
29
Roy walked along the train tracks between Hyde Park and Chicago. There was a distant patchwork of farms to his left, dense forest to his right. The midday sun shone straight down, as if magnifying only on his head and shoulders, trying to melt him away. The sky was spotless and unending. Insects chirred. The nearby trees contracted and moaned like old men in the heat. His eyes were swollen and his vision blurry. His cheeks were wet with thrown water and gritty with salt. There may have been a drop or two in his waterskin, but he refused to check in case the news was deflating.
Getting off the train at Hyde Park had been a cinch, just as Wade said it would be. As the train had slowed, Roy hopped off and slid down a steep bank. At the bottom was a valley of tall weeds. Roy crouched down and lit out from the station unseen while the train was unloaded. By the time the train was again on its way, Roy was already a half mile down the tracks in front of it. When it passed him the wind felt good, but then the heat clamped down.
He was now six or seven miles from the big city. Already he could see the buildings and smoke. In a strange way he felt he was returning home. His mind’s eye saw the streetlights and alleys, the fire escapes and tall brick walls, the faces that looked up from the gutter, and those that looked down from on high. Chicago was a place for both the well-to-do and transients. It was mother to those that sought something more from life than a farm or a trail. And yet the city embodied detachment. Roy once heard someone say Chicago could chew you up and spit you out. He disagreed. The big city breathed you in and absorbed you. It swallowed you and forgot you were ever there.
He recalled his first pass through Chicago. He was eleven years old and had been with the sideshow for just over a month. His only job, so far, had been shoveling horseshit.
“Everyone pitches in,” McLean had said, handing Roy a shovel. “I’ll take it back when you’re ready.”
As much as his own parents did their best by him, they didn’t revel in his difference like McLean did. Out of love they kept him hidden, but hidden just the same. McLean taught Roy to display himself and profit from his difference as though it were a skill, just as the skill of an actor or a blacksmith. He taught him to come by it honestly and feed off society’s repulsion with no reservation, for there would always be a bounty.
Young Roy bellied up to the feast for the first time in Chicago. His banner had been created but kept under wraps until he was
willing. Roy peeked in on it from time to time, stealing away from his wagon at night and unwrapping and unrolling it carefully. Across the top, in red letters, it read Scales, the Crying Lizard. In one lower corner it read Born Alive!, and in the other corner, Why? In the middle was a painted picture of a giant, green lizard with a boy’s head. It looked nothing like Roy, and in fact the image scared him. It only served to make him more hesitant to go on stage.
McLean was patient, but only for so long. They were on the south side of Chicago when he set out the banner for the first time. Standing in the empty midway in the early afternoon, he unwrapped the banner lovingly, like he was removing the swaddle from a newborn child. He unrolled the canvas and tapped nails into the corners, applying it to a wooden stand not unlike an artist’s easel. He propped up the stand dead center amongst the others, making it seem important. When he was done he stood back, put a hand on Roy’s shoulder. “You ain’t here to shovel horseshit, son.”
At the time Jack McLean doubled as both outside and inside talker. The show was not yet profitable enough to afford one of each, so McLean corralled audiences into the tent before quickly moving backstage to introduce the acts. Over time McLean would grow to introduce Roy in varying ways—mostly speaking of a marriage between man and beast, the swamp or bayou, and a reference to Africa or the Amazon when the crowd needed some extra flair—but his last line was always the same. Roy heard the line now as he heard it the first time, and as loud and as clear as if McLean were walking right next to him.
Witness, ladies and gentlemen, the awful price of a woman’s sin.
After sin, Roy had been instructed to come across the stage, turn a full circle, and then sit down. That first time, on Chicago’s south side, he stepped timidly out, a leopard skin loin cloth around his waist. Dozens of eyes were once again upon him, just like at the schoolhouse when he was a boy. However, there was no Paul this time. There was no one looking at him with something different than repulsion. He walked toward a chair in the middle of the stage trying to catch just one set of eyes with which he could connect.
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