She nodded. He took the pistol and pressed the end of it into her ear. He pressed harder and harder until she cried out and he pulled it back in a snap and said it can hurt a helluva lot worse. You remember that.
John LaFell stood and walked into the hallway and he pulled the wagon inside the room. And then he dropped the pistol and fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands and began to cry violently, his shoulders heaving and his head bouncing and the exasperation of something having finally reached its end. She watched him and wanted to understand and then as quickly as this came on, something else came over him and he rose with a roar and grabbed her around the throat and pressed his face into hers and rubbed his forehead against her forehead. He squeezed and she grunted and choked and with his hands shaking and his eyes alive, through gritted teeth he told her again that you’re coming with me and you’re gonna find out what you are.
31
Nick sat at the bar of the saloon with a plate of two slices of ham and a fried egg. Large windows stretched high up the wall on each side of the doorway and a sharp midday sun warmed the smoky room. Round wooden tables and a piano against one wall. A woodburning furnace and its black pipe ran up through the ceiling and was placed oddly in the middle of the floor between several tables. Behind the bar the shelves were filled with liquor bottles. Green, brown, clear. Short, tall, skinny, fat. A size and color for everyone.
As Nick ate the saloon had gradually filled and there were few empty seats. Two barmaids who looked like mother and daughter hustled between the tables and shouted out lunch orders to the bartender who then shouted them through a swinging door back to the kitchen. Working men with windchapped faces sat at the tables closest to the furnace and men in ties and gray or black overcoats sat around the edges of the saloon with newspapers. A pot of some concoction of a hot liquor drink cooked on a small stove behind the bar and the bartender ladled the drink into mugs and set them on the counter. The barmaids delivered them to the tables without having to be asked. Judah sat alone next to the door with a deck of cards spread out on the table.
When Nick was finished he pushed the plate aside and felt in his shirt pocket for a cigarette but didn’t find one. He looked around, listened to the clatter of forks and plates and the random laughter or insult.
“Drink some of that,” the bartender said and he pointed at the liquor pot.
“What is it?” Nick asked.
“Damn good. That’s what it is.”
The bartender filled a mug and set it in front of Nick. Steam danced from the mug and Nick leaned over and smelled. The scent of lemon and molasses and hard grain liquor. Nick took the mug and got up from the barstool and went and sat with Judah.
One of the working men had moved over to the piano and he rolled up his sleeves and began playing something quick and choppy and the mood of the saloon rose though they all knew they had to go back to work. Some back out into the wind and some back to offices but the piano displaced the rest of the day for a moment and brought them all together. The older barmaid lifted a redfaced man from his chair and they danced between tables and the bartender whistled and others tried to clap along with the unpredictable rhythm of the piano. Shouts and whistles filled the air and some called out for whiskey and some already had it and took out bottles tucked away in socks or coat pockets. Stomping and clapping and drinking and smoking and lunch had in an instant become something else.
But then the door of the saloon opened. And the piano player stopped playing. And the barmaid and redfaced man stopped dancing. And there was no more clapping or shouting or eating or drinking. Judah looked up from the cards lying in rows across the tabletop and Nick slid forward in his chair. At the front of the quieted house was the deranged man, a familiar woman, and a wagon.
32
The first thing John LaFell did was remove the gag from Colette’s mouth and then he shoved her to the floor. She went face first into the back of a chair that didn’t budge with the weight of the man sitting in it. No one moved as she slowly got herself to her feet and her hair fell in waves around her shoulders. Her mouth was busted and blood trailed down her chin and matched the blood from her forehead.
John LaFell, wild hair and filthy and drunk, scanned the room with wolfish eyes. He held the pistol up for all to see and then he knelt and picked up the pole that leaned across the bundle. He smacked his lips and then spit on the floor and then he tucked the pistol in the front of his pants. He grabbed the pole at its end and he stepped to the big window and screamed as he swung and shattered the glass. The glass busted and crashed in chunks out onto the sidewalk and inside the saloon and the crowd jumped at the explosion.
He turned and looked at them and then he took patient steps across the doorway to the other window, his boots making deep, throbbing footsteps across the wooden floor. He lifted the pole and swung again and another crash and more glass shattering and now the people walking by or in shops across the street stopped and were as still as the ones who sat inside the saloon.
When the second window was done John LaFell tossed the steel pole out into the street. He told Colette to sit down at the table right in front of him and she did.
Then he scanned the room again until he saw Judah.
“Come here,” he said.
Judah took his cane and pushed on Nick’s leg to help himself up.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to come here,” he said and he pointed the pistol at Colette.
“He don’t care if you kill me or not,” Colette said. John LaFell fired at the floor next to her chair and the wood splintered and she shrieked and everyone jerked.
“I’m coming,” Judah said.
He limped carefully around the tables and made his way toward the front. When he was there, John LaFell told him to sit down at the table with Colette. Dirty plates and mugs of those who had been there before were on the table and John LaFell reached out his long arm and swiped the table clean and the white porcelain shattered and sprayed across the floor.
“You been looking for her?” he asked Judah as he pointed at Colette.
“No.”
John LaFell took one step and backhanded Judah across the face, a loud smack that sent him back and out of his chair.
“Don’t nobody move,” the big man screamed and he fired another shot now into the ceiling. All watched as Judah got himself up and back into the chair.
“You been looking for her?” LaFell asked again.
Judah wiped his face with the back of his hand, blood smearing from cheek to cheek. He nodded.
“Liar,” LaFell answered. “You’re a goddamn liar. And so is she. But I wish you were looking for her so you’d know what it’s like to look for somebody that used to be there. I want you to know what that’s like.”
He backed away from them and stood next to the wagon. Then he knelt and it was as though he became someone else. The anger left his face and was replaced by anguish and sorrow and he leaned over and rested his head on top of the bundle. He began to cry a silent, tearless cry and then he raised his head, slid his arms underneath the quilted bundle, and he lifted it out of the wagon. He stood and turned and faced Judah and Colette and the bundle lay across his arms and the pistol dangled from his hand and his face was covered by the fragile expression of falling apart.
He took two steps forward and he gently laid the bundle down on the table.
He told them to open it. When neither of them moved, he raised the pistol to Judah’s temple. Open it he said again and his hand trembled.
Judah took one side of the quilt and Colette took the other. It was folded on top and at the ends and they carefully unfolded the layers as if it might disintegrate in their fingertips. John LaFell lowered the pistol from Judah’s head.
When they came to the final fold, Colette paused and wiped the blood from her mouth and chin. Judah took hold of the quilt and opened it and he winced and turned his head away and Colette put her hand over her mouth and nose and sucked i
n a big breath. The others strained their necks to try and see but they wouldn’t have to wait as John LaFell told Judah to open it all the way. All the way and show them what you did. What you and her did. Show them.
Judah pulled the quilt all the way back and exposed the black, shriveled body of John LaFell’s child. The arms and legs nothing more than burned black sticks and the body folded in the fetal position and across the saloon the men groaned and one of the barmaids cried out to God and some hid their eyes and some wanted a better look and in the hysteria none of them noticed when the child’s father stuck the pistol to the back of Judah’s head. But everyone noticed when the shotgun blast came from behind the bar and exploded the father’s chest.
33
For what seemed a long time no one moved. Silenced and stalled. The scene paused with open mouths or covered eyes and a smoking shotgun and a shriveled child and a broken father. And then the silence was interrupted by the movement of the bartender. Replacing the shotgun to the hooks beneath the bartop and vanishing through the swinging door behind the bar. Then other noises. The bell of a streetcar moving along its line and a heavy piece of glass falling from the top of the window frame and crashing onto the other fragments. Then Nick stood up and walked over to John LaFell. The blood from his chest and spreading across his stomach and shoulders. The pistol fallen from his hand. Nick picked it up with a steady hand and unloaded the bullets.
Then Judah moved. He slowly pulled himself upright in the chair and then he took the edges of the quilt and began to cover the child’s corpse. Colette took the other side of the quilt and their hands met in the middle and together they folded and covered the body in the way that John LaFell had covered it. Then they stared at one another, each with the expression of remorse. Around the saloon men gathered their coats and hats and began to hurry out. John LaFell lay sprawled in the doorway and the lunch crowd left hastily through the windows as if they had shared in pulling the trigger or lighting the fire. The barmaids held hands and Judah told them to disappear into the kitchen and tell the bartender to get the hell out of here if he hasn’t already. I’ll take care of it when the police get here.
“Look at what you’ve done,” Colette said.
“I didn’t do a thing.”
“Wasn’t just me in that house, Judah. It was my house and the houses next door and the people in them. If you wanna burn me down then burn me down right here and now.”
“If you wanna believe I give a shit about you enough to set your house on fire then go ahead.”
The blood of her busted lip filled her mouth and there was red between her teeth and dripping from her chin and she only stared at him.
“You’re the one who done all this. Not me,” he said. He looked past her and out into the street where spectators multiplied.
“Done what?” she said and she took a napkin from a table and wiped herself. “I’ve been tied up in a black room for I don’t even know how long. I wish you’d tell me what it is you think I’ve done.”
Judah pointed at the quilt and then at John LaFell and said you did all that.
“You don’t make any sense.”
“You did all this when you put this on my face,” he said and he touched his fingers to the crescent scar around his eye.
She laughed a little. A quiet, huffing laugh of disbelief. Then she laughed bigger and threw back her head. She let out a big breath and then she threw the wadded napkin across the room. A police siren sounded from several blocks away.
“Your world is a place unto its own,” she said. “It is a place of its own truth and its own consequences and it is invisible to all. I know you are in there somewhere but I don’t know where. I don’t know why you won’t come out.”
The siren came closer. Judah put his hands on the arms of the chair and pushed himself up. He took his cane and he stepped over to the fallen body of the father. His eyes frozen open as if to sneak one last glance at those he hated.
“Where is the pistol?” he asked Nick.
Nick held it out to him and he took it.
Judah stared down at John LaFell. Coughed into his handkerchief. Colette stepped back from Judah and turned to leave and with his eyes still on the dead man Judah said go back to your whores where you belong.
Colette stopped. Removed a pin from above her ear and pulled her tousled hair back. Wrapped it into a ball and replaced the pin. She then cleared her throat and leaned over and spit. She didn’t look back at him. She wouldn’t. She threw back her shoulders and stepped out onto the sidewalk, just as the police car turned the corner and the street crowd separated to let it through.
34
Nick walked across the saloon floor to where the quilted bundle rested on the table. Laid his hand on top and held it there, as if waiting for a rise and fall of breath.
In front of the saloon two policemen got out of the car and yelled for everyone to get back. They stepped to the sidewalk, looked in and around. Nick folded his arms. Judah’s eyes were heavy and he stood hunched.
They stepped inside and removed their hats. Both wore mustaches and one held a club in his hand as if he were ready for a brawl. The one without the club looked down at the two dead and then at Judah.
“What now, Judah?” he asked.
The other pointed the club down at John and said I know that one. That’s the crazy son of a bitch that’s been wandering around for the last week moaning and groaning.
“He’s not crazy,” Nick said.
“He’s not a damn thing anymore.”
“He was a little bit off,” Judah answered. “He had Colette holed up.”
“I thought she’d run off,” said one of the cops.
“Naw. She burned up,” the other said.
“She ain’t neither,” Judah said and he pointed out of the window with his cane. “If you walk that way like you give a damn you’ll catch her. Then you can ask her about him cause I don’t know a thing.”
“He had his reasons,” Nick said.
The policemen and Judah turned to Nick.
“Who the hell are you?”
“It don’t matter,” Judah said. “He don’t have nothing to do with it.”
“He acts like he does.”
“I only know what I see,” Nick said and he pointed at the bundle.
The cop with the club stepped over the bodies, glass crunching beneath his black boots, and closer to Nick. He touched the tip of the club to the bundle and poked and when he poked twice Nick slapped the club away. The man’s eyes opened wide in surprise and this time the club came with a backhand and caught Nick across the side of the head. He staggered and fell across a chair and landed on his back and saw a blurry ceiling.
“Goddamn it,” Judah yelled and he grabbed the cop by the coat sleeve. “I told you he don’t have shit to do with none of this.”
“He slapped my damn club.”
“I don’t care what he did. You poked a damned child.”
“A what?” the cop asked.
“That thing,” Judah said and he pointed at the bundle.
“It’s a what?”
“You heard me. Now help him up.”
The cop without the club moved over and stuck his hands under Nick’s arms and lifted him to his feet. Nick didn’t stand upright but stayed doubled over until his eyes straightened. The curious faces of the street had crept closer to the saloon and the windows were crowded with peeping heads. Both policemen began to wave them away and one told the other to call for some help and the cop without the club stepped through the mess to the end of the bar and picked up the telephone.
Nick stood up straight. Buttoned his coat. Rubbed at the rising knot on the side of his head. He dragged his hand across his forehead and eyes and he looked around. The shattered, shining glass and the wagon in the doorway and those interested in the dying filling the sidewalks and the father flat on his back and standing with his cane in the middle of it all was the creator. A fragile and sometimes bleeding shell of a man. In a slow,
almost hesitating motion, Judah extended his hand and touched his fingers to the edge of the quilt. His head dropped and his eyes seemed to close and his lips parted in silent words and it was not the first time that Nick had seen the tranquil standing in the midst of chaos. Trying to resolve what had been done.
Nick walked out of the saloon and turned at the first street he came to and then he turned again. Walking fast. Find her, he thought. Find her. He was no longer in Frenchtown but hustling along rue de Clichy. Hurrying to the café where they sat though he knew Ella wasn’t there. Hurrying to the abandoned theater though she was there no more. Find her before I am destroyed. Find her before I destroy myself.
He walked straight and bumped into people on the street who shoved him but he only staggered and kept going and he looked in every store window. In every café. In every grocery and down each alley and in a cigar shop and in two dress shops. Each time he stepped inside an open door he was asked if he needed help or needed something but he ignored the voices and walked the aisles and circled tables and only when he was satisfied that she wasn’t there did he leave without speaking or acknowledging those who glared at him.
He tromped through the Frenchtown streets looking for her and hating himself and all the other Paris girls he had used to replace her. He wandered in some of the same shops and cafés twice. He went into the open doors of buildings and up and down staircases and he climbed a magnolia tree in front of a schoolhouse and searched from a higher perspective but she was nowhere. And then he gave up but his desperation was replaced by paranoia as he felt the sensation of being followed. Of being chased. Of something coming for him. She fled his mind and he nervously looked over his shoulder. Stopped at street corners and peeked around buildings. Breathed quickly and walked faster and he felt as though he was walking around the edge of the pit, waiting to be shoved, waiting to join the others and he smelled the kerosene and saw the torch flames against the darkening horizon and he walked faster but could not escape the edge, bound to it by the invisible rope of fate and he was being pulled toward the otherworld though he slung his arms and pounded his feet and shoved those who crossed his path. He saw the black mutilated child and then he saw himself as a boy standing there at the table next to the corpse and he couldn’t make out the difference between the two and the torches came closer and now he began to apologize. I couldn’t help you and I can’t help me and I’m sorry. I couldn’t help you but it’s coming for me now and it came for the child. He pulled off his coat and slung it to the ground and yanked at his shirt collar and felt the heat and smelled the searing skin. He stomped and rambled and apologized and couldn’t get free and he remained part of the carnival of Frenchtown until exhaustion and then nightfall brought him to his knees.
Nick Page 14
