Roy lifted the gun belt from his shoulder. The sound of the galloping hooves stopped growing, started fading. He moved his arm to toss the gun and belt away, but stopped. He turned an ear to the fading sound. The horse was no longer riding toward him, but away. Death was passing him by. He looked back over his shoulder. The horse was not pale, but brown, and its rider was not the reaper, but Sully. The advance man was crouched low against the horse’s back, riding hard away from the city. Strapped behind him were two familiar satchels, presumably filled with red placards.
Away from the city.
Roy loosed the revolver and fired a shot into the air.
32
Cyrus Lee squinted behind the tiny sights of his Derringer. The man held the pistol straight and unwavering. If he fired, that would truly be that. Paul dropped Jeb Crittendon’s revolver on to the prone man’s belly. He raised his hands and whispered to Sandy behind him, “Stay calm.”
“Back away from him,” Lee said.
“You have only one shot,” Paul said.
Lee smirked and pointed the Derringer at Sandy. “Back away.”
“He’s here,” Sandy said.
Her ears were young. She’d heard Frank Ledger’s funerary rendition of Clementine long before Paul and Cyrus Lee. The low melody echoed down the alley as Ledger’s shadow appeared. It blotted out the sun and stretched over and past Cyrus Lee, engulfing the man in darkness.
Lee’s eyes widened. His fidgety lips went thin. He swallowed when the judge’s blade came to his throat from behind.
“That’ll be enough from you two,” Frank Ledger said.
Cyrus Lee dropped his Derringer. It clattered against the ground. He slowly raised his hands. Ledger safely removed the blade and kicked Lee’s back, sprawling him across the alley floor.
“Cyrus?” Crittendon said. His eyes were swollen closed, his mouth bleeding from the beating he’d taken. “You all right?”
Cyrus Lee crawled across the alley toward his partner.
“I can’t see,” Crittendon said. “Where are you?”
Paul was put into mind of his old grandpap and grandma. All their lives the old man berated his wife and beat her down, kept her behind him. She just took it silently and held the marriage together, kept the home in order. Once Paul was old enough to feel like he knew a thing or two, he determined that his grandma had no backbone. But when grandma died, grandpap came apart and followed her to the grave like a parakeet. Up until this moment Paul thought grandpap had been the strong one all along. Now he understood the opposite was true.
“Answer me, Cyrus,” Crittendon said, rocking on his back like a turtle. His searching hands were turned up like beggar’s palms.
“I’m all right,” Cyrus Lee said, arriving at his partner’s side. “I’m here.”
Jeb Crittendon found Lee’s jacket. He gripped it and pulled the man close.
Frank Ledger kicked Cyrus Lee’s boot. “Get him up.”
Lee helped Crittendon to his feet. The man’s revolver fell off his belly when he stood. Ledger picked up the revolver and put it in the holster on Crittendon’s waist. “You’re too fat,” he said. Then he cut through the leather of Crittendon’s gun belt. The belt lost several inches where Ledger hacked it, but it fit its new owner perfectly well as Ledger tightened it around his own waist. “Now,” he said, “you two go on. Go back to your prison and tell no stories.”
“This ain’t right,” Jeb Crittendon said. He spit out the blood that’d been welling in his mouth. His head turned back and forth as he spoke; his swollen eyes blind to whom he was addressing. “We can’t go back with nothin’. We’ll lose our jobs.”
Frank Ledger sighed. He said, “You keep standing there, talking. I don’t like you.”
“Fuck you, outlaw,” Crittendon said, leaning toward the sound of Ledger’s voice.
He leaned back when his own pistol barrel arrived on his forehead. Ledger pushed him back against the alley wall, using the gun like a bully’s finger. “I’m allowing you to leave with your pitiful life,” he said. “You’ll go back to your prison and tell no stories. Do that, and I won’t come to your bedside one night, as silent as the air you breathe, and take back the gift I’ve just given you. Do it not, and you will never sleep well again.”
Jeb Crittendon opened his mouth to reply, but the words never came. Frank Ledger removed the revolver from Crittendon’s forehead, leaving behind an indented red ring.
“You have our word, sir,” Cyrus Lee said, “I mean, your honor.” He helped his partner down the alley and out.
Frank Ledger holstered his new revolver. He turned to Paul and said, “That true?”
“Is what true?”
“You in league with the lizard?” Ledger said.
“No.”
“Know where he’s going?” Ledger said.
“I need to go home,” Paul said. “My wife.”
Frank Ledger shook his head, no.
Paul considered drawing his gun. At the thought his skin seemed to tighten on him. His hand must’ve twitched because Ledger looked down at it, but his expression didn’t change. He just stood there, waiting. His inaction spoke a volume. Paul wondered how it was possible Roy had out-quicked this man. He may have been able to take Jeb Crittendon, but going against Frank Ledger was a death sentence. He relaxed his hand and let it fall to his side. “The sideshow,” he said. “I reckon he’s trying to find it.”
Ledger looked down at Sandy. “And what about you, little one?” he said. “Do you think the bad man is going to the sideshow?”
“He’s not a bad man,” Sandy said.
Frank Ledger squatted to her level. He regarded Sandy with interest, smirked, and said, “We are all bad men.”
Sandy moved closer to Paul. She gripped his duster. Paul put a hand on her shoulder.
Frank Ledger stood up. “A signboard,” he said. “If there’s a show there’ll be an advertisement. He’ll aim to find it.” He walked to the end of the alley and waited, seeming to give Paul a chance to consider his next move.
Right now, Paul thought, shoot him in the back, right now.
But he could not make his hand move. Frank Ledger would find Roy. Paul was certain of it. He would find Roy and kill him without passion or anger, for Ledger’s task was not vengeance, but a simple rebalancing of the scales. Rage was always in this man, so much so that it no longer qualified as rage. He was as indifferent to vengeance as a farmer was to shucking an ear of corn, but it was his task all the same, and it would possess him until its end. Paul could abide Roy’s death, even at the hands of Jeb Crittendon or Cyrus Lee. Even, God forgive him, at his own hands. There would be a final glory in dying with passion, be it hatred or love, intolerance or mercy. What Paul couldn’t abide was the indifference. He couldn’t let Roy’s life fall away without sound or resistance, like a dream forgotten upon waking.
Paul gripped Sandy’s hand. They walked down the alley until they caught up to Frank Ledger at the mouth. They stood behind him. Two men and a little girl faced the whole of Chicago.
They walked into the street.
Sully’s horse reared and kicked its front legs. “Whoa!” Sully said. He looked back over his shoulder at Roy. He squinted in concentration, and then his eyes widened. “Scales?”
Roy walked out of the water and came to the road.
Sully turned the horse and trotted back to meet him. “Took you for dead.” He hopped down from his horse.
Sully stood a full foot shorter than Roy. He wore a wide brimmed hat with a domed top. His skin was leathery from the constant wind and sun that came with his job. One of his eyes was always a little more squinted than the other, and it seemed to everyone who knew Sully that the suspect eye always flipped back and forth between the two. It was something he and the other performers had once laughed about. At the moment the suspect eye was Sully’s left.
“I heard what they did to you,” Sully said. “That wasn’t right.”
Roy shrugged.
S
ully patted the horse. “You trying to catch up with them?”
“Thought I’d look in on Mr. McLean.”
Sully shook his head.
Roy understood his meaning. “Heart?”
Sully nodded.
“Who’s outside now?”
Sully patted the horse again. He looked out over the water. Finally, he said, “I stay in front. It’s only in the cities they catch up to me. You know that.”
“I do.”
“And you know how they are with me,” Sully said.
Roy nodded. Sully was referring to how the performers confided in him. He was their oracle. He was a safe place to unload the thoughts and feelings they collected along the road, knowing their words would not be repeated to anyone that mattered. A family of freaks was as maladjusted as any other, and they needed the same release other families needed—to talk behind each other’s backs so they could face each other again. Roy himself had confided in Sully many times in his day. Always in the cities at their back-alley saloons, always just a day or two before Sully was off again with a new set of placards, staying ahead. Meeting and talking with Sully had become a rite of passage in their family, an honor and a privilege.
“Then you know how strange I would find it,” Sully said, “that no one said a word when I asked about the new outside talker.”
“You don’t know?”
“Oh, ” Sully said, “I know.” He threw a foot into the stirrup and hopped back into the saddle in one slick move. He picked up the reins and directed his horse back in the direction he’d been heading. “I guess you’ll want to know where they are?”
Roy nodded.
Sully regarded Roy with a perplexed expression. “You should know by now, Scales, the danger of expectations.”
Roy raised his bald eyebrows.
Sully sat up straight in his saddle and cleared his throat. He threw out an upturned hand. Affecting a foreign accent and a commanding tone, he said, “No one is born into this wretched life with expectations. We learn them while we are young, while we are but ore yet to be forged in the crucible of being. We learn them and they make us brittle. But just as the strongest steel emerges when the slag is burned away, the strongest man emerges when he’s burned of expectations.”
“That’s mighty fine,” Roy said.
“I thank you.”
“I’m plenty burned,” Roy said.
Sully smirked. “North side,” he said, falling out of character. “Lincoln Park. They’ve been there almost a week. Tomorrow morning they’ll head out to Gary.”
Roy pointed to one of the satchels. “May I have one?”
Sully produced a red placard from the satchel and handed it over. “It’s nice to see you again, Scales.”
“Roy,” he said. “My name’s Roy Pellerin.” He tipped his hat.
Sully tipped his hat in return. “Of course it is.”
He rode off.
Roy read the placard.
Jack McLean’s Congress of Curiosities
Together with the Top Tent Circus
is Coming to Gary, Indiana, June 3rd at 6 p.m.!
Come see the spectacle! The ten-in-one tent featuring
Camilla, the Camel Girl
Girda, the Heaviest Woman Alive
Scales, the Amazing Lizard
and many more!
Amazing?
Roy’s stomach soured. They’d replaced him without missing a beat. They found some other afflicted soul and the show went on, as always. Even Jack McLean’s death seemed to cause no ripple. But what had Sully said? No one said a word about the new outside talker.
Samson.
Roy looked at Chicago. The city was a dozing dragon with a spiked backbone, its nostrils blowing smoke. People and horses and trains buzzed it like flies. Roy crumpled the placard in a fist and threw it aside. He tipped down his hat, pulled up his collar, and walked toward the slumbering beast.
33
Frank Ledger carved a straight line through the crowd. Unlike Jeb Crittendon, who had barged through, Ledger walked with no resistance as civilized people parted before him. Their irises touched the corners of their eyes to inspect him as he passed.
Paul followed in his wake, Sandy at his side. His heart ached more for his family with every step in the wrong direction. He envisioned Jacob, motherless and lost in a big city like this, scared and searching for dad.
MIGHT NOT MAKE IT, Delmont’s telegram had read. That meant she was still alive. There was hope.
But first the task at hand. How could he ditch Frank Ledger and get to Roy first? What was the plan? He could just stop walking, right now, and let Ledger continue on. The crowd would swallow him up. He and Sandy could duck into an alley and disappear.
No. He thought of how Ledger had appeared at the alley mouth after they lost him once before. The man was a shadow when need be. And besides, Jeb Crittendon had had a plan, too.
Paul would have to plan better. He needed more than just a head start. He needed to put sizeable distance between himself and Ledger.
How?
With no answer to the question, he followed.
They had agreed that Roy would likely make his way through the city. He would look for signs of the sideshow and go to them, so they should do the same.
They moved away from the train station and up Pine Street toward the city center. Beneath their feet were cobblestones, and to the left and right were buildings in varying states of construction—some residential, some industrial, and some still burned out by the fire of 1871. Desperate faces peered out from underneath the fire escapes that zigzagged the alley walls. The rich passed the poor without a glance. The streets were littered with trash and discarded food. A raggedy pigeon with pink feet watched two gulls bicker over a moldy crust. The combatants pecked each other’s chests and came away with fine down feathers. As they squabbled, the pigeon snuck in and snatched the bread away from them.
“I’m hungry,” Sandy said.
Paul felt the weight of the coin bag on his head. He couldn’t remember his last meal. His stomach gurgled. He was surprised to feel hunger in this situation. In the stories he’d heard and read—hell, even in the stories he told—the good guys never ate. They were impervious to hunger and thirst, while villains ate and drank with fervor. It was a character thing. Food represents gluttony. The good side should appear strong and willful, while the bad should appear gluttonous and weak. Paul wasn’t sure what it said about him that he was starving.
Frank Ledger stopped and rubbed his elbow. He looked up. “It will rain again.”
They came to a city square. In the center was a base for a statue not yet built. The base was a concrete block, larger at the bottom than at the top, and there was a readymade place for an iron plaque. Paul wondered what kind of figure might grace the statue’s base some day. Likely a Federal war hero.
“There,” Ledger said. He pointed across the square.
At first Paul couldn’t see, due to the number of people milling about. He moved up to his tiptoes and peered around heads until he saw the signboard. It was a squatty thing. Two stout wooden legs stuck out from underneath a mountain of paper and nails. They moved through the crowd to find the signboard plastered with ads. One for a Nodark Camera, six dollars. Another claimed that baldness is curable with a simple tonic. Brain Salt. Laudanum. Upright Pianos. Paul eyed a whiskey ad. Sour Mash. Bourbon. Straight. A sweet pain came to his jaw, his salivary glands excreted and begged him to make real the words he read. His stomach began a revolt. He peeled the ad off the face of the board. Ledger followed his lead and peeled back some others. They tore sheets away until a red placard emerged. It told of the circus and sideshow going on this week in north Chicago at Lincoln Park.
Paul felt a sensation like snakes crawling up the backs of his legs. Roy was close. He knew that. He would go to his sideshow, to his kin.
“Will he join them?” Ledger said.
Paul pretended to think on the question. He needed to temper Ledger’s ha
ste and buy some time to clear himself of this man. It would do no good to march him straight to Roy. He shrugged. “They cut him up and left him for dead.”
Frank Ledger nodded. “We’ll move upon them tonight. Let him go to them before we take him down. If we’re there first, he’ll know, and he’ll run.” He lifted his right hand and looked down at it. It trembled. Ledger shook his head. “Meantime, we’ll eat.”
Sandy gripped Paul’s hand more tightly. He looked down at her. She smiled.
Paul looked around the square’s outer rim. Most of the buildings were tenements, but along the near side was the Fisherman’s Inn. The building was constructed of red and brown brick, the sign was a carved wooden plaque hanging from dark chains. He pointed at the inn, but Ledger was already walking toward it.
The sky blinked white with lightning. A brooding storm, just as Ledger had predicted. Plump, dark clouds moved toward them over the tall buildings.
Paul began counting. The thunderclap stopped his counting at three. The first drops of rain touched the cobblestones, touched his hat. He saw their dark circles collecting on Frank Ledger’s shoulders as they walked. He watched the man shake off the rain in a move not unlike one of his seizures. When they pulled open the door to the Fisherman’s Inn, Paul realized he had a plan.
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