Land Sharks

by S. L. Stoner

  The gray horse he hired had a smooth gait, so Sage enjoyed the hour-long ride through downtown, across the river and south along the river bank. He easily found Kincaid’s house. It squatted down among other tiny clapboard houses in a weedy field just outside the plywood mill gates. Without a doubt, the houses were ones built, owned and never maintained by the factory owner. Sage could picture the inside layout. As a child he’d lived in a similar house. A typical mill town shack had a narrow hallway running down one side ending at a back door. On one side of the hallway, three doorways opened into parlor, kitchen and bedroom. A well-trod dirt path out the back door assuredly led straight as an arrow to a one-hole outhouse.

  The Kincaids’ weathered clapboard was distinguished from its neighbors by the sole personal touch customarily allowed mill town renters. An unpainted window box, holding a profusion of leggy red geranium blooms, hung beneath the single window next to the front door. The flowers gave the shack a defiant cheeriness. The sight of those flowers sent his thoughts back to that Appalachian shack. Springtime, geraniums had filled its window box, too, his mother having sheltered them inside throughout each bitter winter. Today, the sight filled him with pity and foreboding. His mother’s optimistic flowers hadn’t shielded her family from tragedy.

  Sage stepped up and rapped his knuckles against a flimsy door that shook within its frame. A young woman, holding an infant, pulled it open. Murmuring something unintelligible, she stepped out onto the stoop.

  An aurora of unruly light brown hair framed her pale, heart-shaped face. Her skin was satiny, like the rose petal his finger had stroked that morning. But her face was slack, without animation. This woman didn’t care how unkempt she looked. Her faded pink cotton dress drooped off her shoulders as though she hadn’t bothered fastening its buttons. When she turned to pull the door shut behind her, he saw that was the case. The infant against her shoulder gazed at Sage with wide, unfocused eyes that seemed to find the world bewildering.

  “Mrs. Kincaid?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m Mrs. Joseph Kincaid.” Her arms tightened protectively around the child. “Are you here about my husband?” The muscles around her eyes tensed and her gaze sharpened. Hard to tell whether she was fearful or angry.

  Sage doffed his hat. “Yes, ma’am, I am. My name is John Miner. The union asked me to find out what happened to him. I’m sorry, Mrs. Kincaid, there’s no news of him yet. I stopped by hoping you will tell me about when you saw him last. Maybe, what he told you and what you knew about his plans.”

  His piece said, Sage waited, his hat pressed against the twill of his cheap blue serge suit, watching her closely for any sign of deception.

  Her chin lifted and her lips tightened, her face taking on a mulish look as her blue eyes drilled into him.“The police stopped looking for him,” she said bitterly. “They act like he deliberately abandoned us. He’s not that kind of man. He loves us.” She said the last three words emphatically, as if trying to convince herself. Her eyes filled with tears and she looked down, pressing her lips onto the silky down on the baby’s head.

  Sage shifted his feet and let the silence stretch out. It seemed she’d forgotten his presence, losing herself in some byway of memory or possibly in the dead end of despair. Grief seemed to drape across her bent shoulders like a soggy blanket. Sage cleared his throat to summon her back to the present.

  She started. When she spoke her words sounded mumbled, as if clogged by unshed tears. “We fought. He stormed off to work mad. It was my fault. I’d been up with the baby all night and I . . . I hollered things I didn’t mean. I said I was going to leave, take Faith with me.” She sagged, as if her legs had suddenly lost their bones.

  Sage grabbed her elbow. “Let’s sit here on the stoop for a minute,” he said gesturing with his bowler hat.

  She nodded and he eased her down as she swung the baby forward to sit in her lap, wrapping both her arms around the child as if protecting her. The baby wiggled unsuccessfully against her mother’s grip. Sage sat beside the woman, watching as his John Miner Sunday best boots collected the path’s dust stirred up by a slight breeze. Tears once again coursed unchecked down her cheeks onto the baby’s head. Guilt and grief. The most potent mix of pains.

  Sage gazed about him. In one direction, down the dirt road, stood the mill yard with its clutter of heaped wood scraps and stacked plywood sheeting protected by rusted tin awnings. In the opposite direction, the dirt road intersected the main road leading to Portland. A ramshackle two-story building anchored one corner of the junction.

  At last, she raised a sleeve to wipe her face dry. He cleared his throat. “Tell me how you and Joseph came to live here in Milwaukie, Oregon,” he said quietly.

  She sniffed, wiped her face with a grimy sleeve and began talking, almost to herself. Her words poured out. The story she told was one typical of the thousands of people flooding into the area, all looking to create a new life in the more sparsely settled West. Joseph, it seemed, was a strong union man so he had jumped at the chance to organize a union at the plywood mill. There’d been no extra pay for the work, so they’d been struggling from one paltry mill paycheck to the next. Men like Kincaid risked their jobs and their lives for no reward other than the hope that one day, they’d see economic and social justice for people like themselves.

  Mrs. Kincaid looked at him with wide eyes, her face earnest as she explained, “I was hollering at him about the money, but that’s not why I hate it here. Mostly, I’ve been sick to my stomach afraid. Every week, some man down there to the mill loses his finger or his hand. That’s what I was worrying myself about. I didn’t want to jinx Joey by talking about it. But every day when he left for work, I dropped to my knees and prayed that God would keep him safe from those saws. Every single day, up till the day he just up and disappeared.” Her chin started to wobble.

  Sage spoke quickly, “When’s the last anyone saw him?”

  “On July thirty-first, over two weeks ago, at that saloon right down there.” She pointed toward the building at the junction. Her chin started wobbling again and she gulped before continuing, “It was after the union meeting. They all tell me that he only drank one beer before he left. He told everybody he was coming home to me and Faith.” She laid her cheek on the silky hair of the drowsy baby and sighed.

  “What does Joseph look like?”

  Without a word she handed the baby to him and nipped into the house. He held the warm bundle, looked down into the sleeping little face and felt an unfamiliar stirring. Not a bad feeling–just unfamiliar.

  She returned holding a photograph. Taking the child back, she gave Sage the picture.

  It was their wedding picture. Though they were posed like stone statues, their wide eyes still shone with youthful optimism. His hair was curly like hers and his jaw was remarkably square and determined. The young man would be easy to recognize, if Sage ever laid eyes upon him. He handed the photograph back to her.

  She didn’t take it. “No, no. Take that away with you. Joey and I took a little silly. We asked the photographer to print a number of photographs. One for each child we wanted to have. We planned to raise four or five kids, some our own, some adopted. When he comes home . . .” she swallowed hard, “if he comes home, you can give it back.”

  As he stood to go, she struggled to her feet and clutched his forearm with small, tense fingers. “Mr. Miner, please find out what happened to my Joey. I need to know if he deserted Faith and me or if something bad happened to him.” Her face crumpled and she fought for control. When she spoke again, her voice was calm. “If it turns out that Joey just up and left us, we got nobody who cares about us–nobody.” Her voice trailed off, her staring eyes fixed on the dirt at the bottom of the steps as if fearful of the earth opening up and swallowing her whole.

  The flat tone of that last word, ‘nobody,’ made Sage uneasy. He cleared his throat and drew on a confidence he didn’t feel to say, “You need to keep up your hopes, Mrs. Kincaid. I’ll do everything possible to l
earn what happened to your husband.” He caught her eyes in a steady gaze and spoke from that center in his belly Fong always talked about.“I am absolutely certain he did not leave you of his own free will.” As he spoke the words, he knew somehow, he was speaking the truth. “No matter what, I promise to return and tell you what really happened to him,” he said.

  Sage pulled out all the folding money in his pockets, pressed it into her hand and closed her unresisting fingers around the wad. “Right now, you must take care of yourself and take care of little Faith. You know that’s what Joseph would want you to do.”

  When Sage reached the corner of the narrow dirt street, he glanced back at the shabby little house. Mrs. Kincaid still sat on the steps, her face hidden, her body hunched over the sleeping child on her lap. The sight made him ask a question of that nameless being he sometimes believed in: Why are such heavy burdens placed upon such frail shoulders?

  FOUR

  MILLMEN’S, THE SALOON where Kincaid was last seen, was the ramshackle, two-story, wood frame building visible from the Kincaids’ front steps. When Sage stepped inside, he saw that the sunlight filtering through the clean front window provided the only daytime illumination. That light revealed a well-swept floor, and scrubbed wooden wire spools that served as tables surrounded by mismatched kitchen chairs. Overhead, unlit kerosene lanterns dangled from exposed beams. Colorful magazine pictures were pasted on the drab brown walls. A simple plank, extending the length of one wall until ending eight feet shy of the rear corner, served as the establishment’s bar. Behind it, a wall shelf held glass mugs, shot glasses and a few half-full whiskey bottles. A large wooden keg, sporting a bunghole tap, anchored the plank end nearest the door. At the plank’s far end, stood a cook stove, a huge battered tin wash pan on a table and stacks of plates filling rough wall shelves. This rude corner arrangement was the establishment’s kitchen. An odor of pan-fried onions goaded Sage’s stomach into rumbling.

  All in all a welcoming place to men dropping by for a beer after work or when bringing their wives to socialize with neighbors. Drunken fisticuffs were the most likely danger in this establishment. Altogether, a decent watering hole. Not much like the North End’s saloons except for the beer, whiskey and meager furnishings. Millmen’s seemed an unlikely place for a Kansas farm boy to encounter danger.

  The man behind the bar was drying beer mugs. He was a slight man, with pale skin, high forehead and watery blue eyes. Sharp intelligence lit the penetrating look he gave Sage.“Help you, sir?” he asked affably. Sage reached the bar and rested a boot on the wooden, floor-mounted foot rail that ran length of the plank. He nodded at the barkeep and said,“If you don’t mind, a root beer will suit me fine. It’s a little early in the day for the real stuff.”

  The man laughed and lifted a brown bottle from a box on the floor behind the bar. He pried off the cap, poured the deep brown liquid into a mug and handed it to Sage, saying, “Ain’t too many of my customers with that idea. More’s the pity for some of them.”

  Sage swallowed the heavy liquid, licking the foam off his droopy mustache. “I wanted to ask you about one of your customers,” he began.

  The barkeep’s face stiffened. “And just which customer might that be?” His tone was chilly.

  “A young man named Joseph Kincaid.”

  The barkeep’s eyes narrowed, openingly suspicious now. “I guess what I might say depends on just who it is doing the asking. You with the police or the plywood company?”

  With this man, Sage realized, truth would give a longer ride than a lie. “Neither. I’m helping the union and Mr. Kincaid’s wife by trying to find the man,” Sage responded.

  “Just why the heck should I trust what you say, mister?” The bartender stepped back and crossed his arms across his chest, eyes still narrowed and face skeptical.

  Sage pulled the couple’s wedding photo from his pocket and slid it across the counter. “Mrs. Kincaid gave me this. Only person I could have gotten it from, don’t you think?”

  The barkeep stepped forward, took the photo and studied it longer than was necessary for him to identify those pictured. He laid it down on the plank and used a single finger to gently push it back toward Sage. When he looked up, the suspicion was gone, leaving only a worry crease wrinkling his forehead. “He’s dead,” he said, his voice flat.

  Sage’s mug clattered against the bar. Someone found Kincaid’s body?

  Sage’s face apparently signaled his thoughts because the man rushed to say, “No, they ain’t found his body. That don’t matter. There’s no question in my mind. He’s dead.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  The barkeep’s finger tapped the photo. “Joey loved that pretty little lady and I don’t believe he ran off from her. He left the saloon before anyone else that night because he wanted to be home with her. And that baby daughter of his–he was so excited about that little girl. Why, he babbled on and on about every little thing she did. It was like she was the first baby ever born. No, I’m certain he’s dead or something worse. Nary a doubt in my mind ‘bout that.” He shook his head, his face sad, “Just two blocks to walk and poof, he’s gone. Has to be somethin’ bad happened.”

  Sage sighed. The man’s confirmation of St. Alban’s fear deepened Sage’s own persistent foreboding without giving him anything to act on. Sage pressed for more information, “Can you think of anything Kincaid said, or anything unusual he did that night?”

  “Nope, other than leaving early. Told us that the baby was colicky so he was going home to help his wife. Everybody else stayed. They were happy and celebrating because of the high meeting turnout. It meant they got the majority of the plant behind them and some bargaining power with the owner. Joey gets credit for that. He’s hardworking and likable both.” The man shook his head and made a half-hearted swipe at another beer mug before saying, “‘Course now that Joey’s disappeared and him being the second one and all, well, the men are afraid to support the union. I’d say the company’s won this one.”

  “What’s your opinion of the union?”

  Fire flashed into the watery blue eyes. “I’ll tell you what I think, and if you’re working for the company and burn me out for saying it, well, so be it. I know these men, mister. They’re fine, upright, hardworking men. That mill cuts expenses so close to the bone that the men and their families are near to starving. And those saw blades are chopping off fingers and hands every which way. And not because the men are careless. It’s because they are being drove too hard and because the company don’t take precautions to make it safe. Do those men need a union? Hell, yes, they need a union.” He slammed the mug down onto the plank for emphasis. The handle snapped off. With a rueful tweak of his cheek, the barkeep tossed handle and mug into the bottle barrel against the wall. “Good thing this is my place,” he said.

  Sage laughed and then sobered, saying “I won’t disagree with you about the need for a union. Too many places are like the plywood mill. That’s why I support unions myself. That’s why I’m trying to find Kincaid.” He swallowed the last of his soda, thanked the man and was turning to depart when a thought stopped him. “Say, any strangers in here the night Kincaid disappeared?” he asked.

  The barkeep crinkled his nose in concentration before his gaze sharpened with a memory. “Matter of fact,” he said, “two strangers stopped in that night. Kept themselves to themselves. Didn’t much like the looks of them. Never saw them before or since,” he said.

  “When did they leave from here that night?”

  This time the barkeep’s nose antics yielded no results. “Can’t recall to mind when it was they left. It was busy in here, what with the union meeting and all. I just remember looking over to their table,” here he gestured with his chin toward a corner table near the door, “and seeing they’d gone. Don’t recall when it was that I noticed.”

  “Anything about their looks to help me pick them out if I go looking for them?”

  The bartender smiled for the first time, reveali
ng a wide gap between his top front teeth. “I right guess there is. Mighty rough-looking characters. The big one’s face carried a nose mashed to one side and there were pits, too, like the pox got ‘em when he was already grown. The other one sported a piss-poor mustache, not a full one like yours,” he said, nodding toward the unwaxed sweep of hair across Sage’s upper lip. “His was straight and narrow, like he drawed it on with a pencil. And he was so thin that if he closed one eye you’d think he was a needle. You spot them two together, you found the right ones.”

  Sage thanked the man again and headed out the door. He spent another hour of root-beering through every Milwaukie saloon. His effort yielded no additional sightings of Kincaid or of the big man with the pocked face and his pencil-mustached sidekick. Sloshing like a half-full keg of root beer, Sage called it quits and visited a convenient bush before reining his horse toward Portland and letting the animal set the pace. Whenever the horse took it into his mind to trot, the stiff cardboard of the Kincaids’ wedding picture jostled in his shirt pocket so that its corners poked his chest. Those pokes kept triggering that sense of foreboding first stirred to life by St. Alban’s letter. Nothing he’d learned on his Milwaukie trip lessened its potency. In fact, if anything, his sense of impending tragedy was stronger. He feared that Joseph Kincaid’s baby daughter would grow up without ever knowing her father.