The clerk said, “Have you money?”
“No. Can I pay you later?”
“Can I extend you credit? Why, sure.”
Aodh took Nyx by the elbow and guided her toward the door.
The clerk said, “Gut nacht. See yous tomorrow.”
“CHRIST, I JUST WANT SOMETHING TO EAT.”
“And you’ll get it once we get back.” Aodh turned onto a trail that led to Mauch Chunk.
“Back where?”
“The patch.”
“I have to get home. I told Angus—”
“You can’t get back tonight, lad. Yer on the other side of the mountain now.”
They saw lights flickering ahead. Nyx knew the patch town was there and had avoided it for fear of being recognized. But no one was out now. And when she followed Aodh into a shack on the outskirts of town, she heard only snoring loud enough to rattle the windowpanes.
Aodh lit a candle in the kitchen and motioned for Nyx to enter. When she did, he said, “Two things.”
“Yah.”
He handed her a circular brass tag the size of a half dollar. She held it next to the candle flame and inspected it. In the center of the tag was a large number “5.”
“Tha’s your number. Donna lose it.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else your tools is lost to some other poor bastard. You need that for to get yer gay-hizzle.”
Around the periphery of the tag it read, “Property of B. F. E.”
“What’s B. F. E.?”
“Black Feather Extraction.” Aodh handed Nyx two apples and a slice of bread. “And donna take nothin’ from Black Feather on credit. Never. They’ll kill ya on the vigorish.”
“Why’d you call that man Butcher?”
“Donna matter.”
He led her into the main room, pointed to an open space on the floor, and handed her a wool blanket.
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
She sat cross-legged on the floor and watched Aodh in the kitchen while she devoured the food. He started a fire in the stove and removed his shirt. Nyx saw his back, black and purple, encrusted with blood. He washed his shirt in the water he heated and used it to clean his wounds, as best he could. She felt a surge of emotion for the man, the likes of which she hadn’t felt in years, or ever. Nyx thought to help him as she tilted sideways and fell asleep.
FIVE
BY ORDER OF THE OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, U.S. ARMY and the Honorable Tate Cain, I order you to open this door!”
When the they arrived, Kamp was still awake, savoring the feeling of relaxation that had just begun to seep into his bones.
But then he’d heard one man’s voice and then another, angry whispers outside the window. And then the pounding began, along with the shouting.
Kamp crouched low, hustled to the kitchen and retrieved the Sharps rifle from the closet. He loaded it and moved to the front window of the house.
Blue uniforms—he counted six—circled the house. A seventh man in a great coat strode to the front door.
Kamp slipped onto the porch, raised the rifle and sighted the man, who beat his fist on the door again.
“Open this door, or we shall be forced to enter.”
The man in the great coat motioned for two uniformed men to come forward. They carried a battering ram. The man stepped aside as the uniformed men prepared to destroy the front door.
Kamp said, “Don’t.”
The man turned to look at Kamp, saw the rifle barrel pointed at him and raised his hand for the men with the battering ram to stop.
The man said, “Ah, there you are.”
The soldiers who’d encircled the house now came running, pistols drawn.
He called to them, “Put those down, put those down. He’s right here.”
With the rifle still raised, Kamp approached the man in the great coat who said, “I’m certain you can see you’re at a grave disadvantage. I advise you to lower your weapon, lest your family have to witness your execution.”
Kamp said, “Who are you?”
The man smiled and said, “The real question is, who are you?”
“You’re not taking me anywhere.”
“Nor do I intend to. I simply wish to inform you of where things stand. Let us talk.”
“Things?”
“Indeed, the process, and your impending trial.”
Kamp heard the upstairs window open and looked to see Shaw’s face there, and he heard Autumn starting to wail. He looked back at the man in the great coat, lowered his rifle and said, “All right. But they’re staying outside.”
THE MAN PRODUCED a leather-bound portfolio, set it on the kitchen table, then removed his coat.
Kamp started a fire in the stove and turned to the man. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thank you. I must say, you appear quite calm, considering.
“Uh huh.”
“I always admired that about you.”
Kamp put the kettle on the stove and said, “You’re in my house, and you’re upsetting my family. I don’t want to make it worse.”
“Fair enough. May I?” The man gestured to the portfolio. Kamp nodded.
Shaw appeared in the doorway with Autumn clutching her leg.
“What’s going on, love?”
“A half dozen assholes and two cups of coffee.”
The man stood and said, “Ma’am.”
“Go back upstairs,” Kamp said.
He finished making the coffee and handed a mug to the man, then took a sip from his own.
Shaw said to the man, “What’s your name?”
The man opened the portfolio and said. “Reid, A. R., Colonel, U.S. Army, retired. I was Wendell W. Kamp’s commanding officer in the war.”
Kamp said, “I’ve never seen him before.”
“Precisely. That’s because you’re not Kamp.”
“Come again?”
“You’re not Wendell W. Kamp. You’ve assumed his identity.”
“You’re insane.”
A.R. Reid said, “Ma’am, I’m afraid your husband is an impostor.”
Autumn, still clutching Shaw’s leg, said, “What does that mean?”
“It means that it’s time for this nice man to leave,” Shaw said.
Reid shook his head. “I’m afraid it won’t be that easy. Wendell Kamp served his country with distinction. He did nothing wrong. But this man has committed a crime. Many crimes in fact.”
Shaw said, “Who has?”
Reid gestured to Kamp. “This man. His name is Nickel Glock.”
“Bullshit.”
Reid pulled two sheets of paper from the portfolio and slid them across the table.
“Please look carefully. This one is a form, signed by Wendell W. Kamp when he first mustered in, 1861. The second is a form you signed several days ago to confirm the receipt of a certified letter. Notice the signatures.”
Kamp and Shaw leaned over the table and examined the papers. The first signature was written in cursive with large, swooping W’s. The second was printed in crude, blocky letters.
“Means nothing,” Kamp said.
“Alas, it does. We’ve known about you for a good while, but we lacked proof. This means you’re not who you say you are. And that’s a problem. For the government, and for you.”
Kamp studied Reid. He had a bald head, ruddy face and thick, red sideburns that extended below his chin and cradled his jowls. Reid wore a tailored, grey three-piece suit with a pocket watch and chain. Kamp was certain he’d never seen the man before.
“Tell them to leave us alone,” Kamp said.
Reid smiled. “Mr. Glock, we’ve come straight from the courthouse on the orders of the Honorable Tate Cain.”
“Leave.” Kamp pounded his fist on the table.
Reid’s face turned serious. “I’d like to show you something else. But the child must not see this.”
Shaw walked upstairs with Autumn, who said, “No, no.”
Shaw cam
e back down alone and took a seat at the table.
Reid slid a photograph from the portfolio. It depicted a man’s head in profile, supine, eyes open. At the temple, there was a ragged hole roughly the size of a silver dollar. At the bottom right corner, it read, “Patient: W.W. Kamp.”
Reid looked at Shaw and said, “That’s the real Kamp.”
Shaw pointed to the large, star-shaped scar at Kamp’s left temple and said, “Yes, so is that.”
Reid unclipped a note from the back of the photograph and read it aloud, “December 15, 1862. Fractures of temporal, sphenoid. Removal of bullet fragments. Surgery unsuccessful. Deceased.”
Kamp said, “Who wrote that?”
Reid produced another photograph of the same scene but with a wider angle that showed the entire body laid flat on a wooden table in front of an open tent and a man standing next to it.
“That man, the surgeon.” Reid pointed to the man in the photograph.
“Do you know him?”
“Of course.”
“What’s his name?”
“He died, too.” Reid looked directly at Kamp. “Tragically.”
Shaw picked up the first photograph, studied it, then looked at Kamp and back at Reid.
“You’re lying.”
Reid put the materials back in the portfolio, stood up and put on his great coat. He looked at Kamp and said, “Nickel, it’s time you told your wife the truth. Not only will this matter not drop, it will go forward. You’ve a hearing tomorrow morning at eight o’ clock sharp with the Judge. Be certain to attend.”
SIX
AODH PULLED NYX FROM A DREAM. In it she was picking raspberries with her sisters on the slope behind their old house, and then she ran with a full bucket, eager to share the bounty with her father. He roused her from sleep, and they were on the road well before dawn.
She and Aodh had been the last miners at the company store the previous night and now were the first to show up. Nyx handed her brass tag to the clerk who fetched her Gezähe, then did the same for Aodh.
Aodh said to the clerk, “It’s today, ain’t it?”
The clerk shrugged. “Mebbe, mebbe not.”
Aodh left the store and hurried in the direction of the glow at the summit, the mouth of the mine.
Nyx said, “What’s the rush?”
“Trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“Dis Padgett called for an action. An’ I donna want no part of it.”
Nyx labored to keep up with him as he ascended Gravity Road. The sounds of the approaching day—the murmur of birds and the clank of the gravity car hooking into the track—spurred him.
She caught him as he reached the top and grabbed the hem of his coat. He spun to face her and winced when he did.
“Not now.”
They passed the spoil heap and the wraiths who scoured it, then reached the agent who conducted a brief inspection of their gear and waved them on.
They rode an otherwise empty car into the mine, past the kid who swung the door open and then shut it behind them and then down to their room and finally to the tiny space where they hewed the coal. Not long after they’d begun, they heard noise above them in adjoining rooms, excited shouting and a series of loud whumps.
“Ah, Jaysus.”
Nyx said, “What is it?”
“Action is starting.”
The commotion grew louder, more shouting and men banging shovels against the sides of the mine cars. Then they smelled smoke, and Aodh backed out of the space and stood up.
“Let’s go.”
They hustled back out through the maze of subterranean rooms, found the track and joined the stream of men flowing toward the surface. At the heavy door they passed the trapper kid who, instead of opening and closing it as each group passed, propped the door open and let the flood of men pour out into the morning sunshine.
She thought the miners looked like demonic, shambling foot soldiers. Some carried coal axes, but most were empty-handed. A knot of men formed fifty feet from the mouth of the mine.
Nyx saw that they’d surrounded the agent, the man Aodh called Butcher, slapping his face and jeering. One of the men knocked the agent to the ground with a clout on the ear, and the rest set to, kicking and spitting on him.
The agent pulled his knees to his chest and covered his head with his hands. The men didn’t relent but rather redoubled the attack.
A HIGH WHISTLE PIERCED THE AIR, and all heads swung around to see a man emerging from the mine, not far from where Nyx stood. She’d never seen him before but had heard his name. Dis Padgett.
He stood well over six feet, and unlike most miners, was unbent. His face was grimy, even dirtier than the rest, with hard blue eyes staring out from it.
The miners waited in silence as Padgett strode toward them with a sledgehammer slung across his shoulders. They made way when he reached them, and he stepped to the agent, still curled in a ball on the ground.
Padgett said, “Butcher, you paid for your number with another man’s blood. That you cannot do.”
The agent peered up at him through the broken lenses of his glasses and said, “I don’t make the rules. And I didn’t hurt your man.”
Padgett turned away from the agent and scanned the crowd. When he saw Aodh, Padgett held out the sledgehammer, offering it.
Aodh gave him a flat expression and shook his head. In one motion Dis Padgett spun on his heel, raised the hammer and brought it down on the agent’s thigh, smashing his femur.
“Flip him over,” Padgett said.
The attackers rolled the agent onto his back. Again Padgett raised the hammer and again he brought it down, destroying the agent’s other leg as well.
“Now give him a ride.”
A cheer went up as a pair of miners dragged the agent by his arms to a mine car poised at the top of Gravity Road. The men loaded him into the car and stepped aside. Dis Padgett walked to the car and looked at the agent, whose head and face showed bright red lumps and a trickle of blood from one eye. Padgett leaned in and gently cradled the agent’s head.
He said, “Well done good and faithful servant.”
Then Dis Padgett stood up and brought the hammer down one more time, smashing the brake that held the mine car in place. It began its descent, rolling down the track and picking up speed.
The men watched the car screaming down Sleeping Bear Mountain. The agent, benumbed by shock, made no attempt to slow the car. It departed the tracks when it reached at the curve at the bottom and slammed into a concrete wall. Momentum ejected the agent from the car, hurling him face first into the wall.
The crowd atop the mountain saw the impact and heard the thud a second later. They watched the agent’s body crumple to the earth next to the mangled mine car. They waited a beat and then another to see if he would move. When he didn’t, a calm settled on the scene.
Dis Padgett clapped one of the attackers on the shoulder and addressed the miners, “Before they was wondering. Now they’ll know. The above-world belongs to them, but the world below is ours.”
A mighty cheer arose.
“Go, men. Take your rest today, and come back t’morra.”
Most of the miners started down the mountain, laughing and hooting.
Dis Padgett called after them, “And for the sake of Jaysus, donna burn down the company store.”
More laughter and then Padgett turned to Aodh and extended his hand.
“We did a necessary thing, lad. For Casey and for our kind.” He squeezed Aodh’s hand as he said it. Padgett let go and said, “Well, god bless you, lad. And god bless Casey.” Then he vanished down the slope.
Aodh turned and walked into the mine, and Nyx followed. Nyx noticed that some of the other miners did the same, heads down and shuffling back down the hole.
When they reached the kid at the heavy door, Aodh said to him, “An extra dollar if you stay the day.”
“Ach, I don’t need no extra,” the kid said, “but that don’t mean I’ll t
urn it down.”
AODH FELL TO WORK ONCE MORE. He and Nyx filled a car, had it hauled off, then began filling another. Aodh took off his shirt and tossed it to the ground.
Nyx said, “What happens now?”
Without stopping, he said, “You’re lookin’ at it.”
“What about that man?”
“Who?”
“Butcher? What about him?”
“How can they just do that?”
Aodh scratched the red whiskers of his beard. “What’s your name, lad?”
“Nef.”
“Nef what?”
She hadn’t thought of a last name, and she wasn’t ready for the question.
“Bahr,” she said.
He cocked his head to the side and studied her. “Nef Bahr, you look young to me, but you sure donna look stupid.”
She felt her legs starting to shake and had to look away.
She said, “Why did that man offer you the hammer?”
Aodh started hewing again.
He said, “Because of Casey. Me an’ my cousin Casey worked down here for a year. But Butcher sent him to his last dark an’ lonely.”
“How?”
“Put us in a room that exploded. Casey got the worst of it. Some think Butcher done it to pay him back.”
“Casey?”
“No. Padgett. Padgett and Butcher had a runnin’ agro.”
“A what?”
“Feud. Irish against German. Padgett was settling a score with the Germans. He knew me an’ Casey worked together an’ that we was kin. Thought maybe I’d want to do the honors myself.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I din’ approve of what Butcher did, but I din’ wanna kill him neither. I got no time for that can o’ piss. Padgett had his own reasons besides.”
“Like what?”
“Jaysus, nephew, but you got all the questions.”
“Like what.”
“Maybe he was in love with Casey.”
“Oh.”
“But don’t tell that to Mrs. Padgett.” Aodh hefted his coal axe. “Or Mrs. Casey.”
“I won’t.”
“Jus’ remember, Nef Bahr, if you have to wonder whether a body down here is for or against you, that body is against.”
Nyx shifted her gaze to Aodh, who’d turned away from her and begun hacking the seam above his head. His bare back was crisscrossed with scars, some healed, most not.
Kill the Raven: A Thriller (Raven Trilogy Book 3) Page 3
