This Scorched Earth

by William Gear

  “Sarah?” he asked softly, as though suddenly unmanned.

  “Hush, Bret. I need to do this. I have to do this.”

  “By this, do you mean … I don’t want you to think I…”

  She placed her lips against his, letting them linger, slowly teaching herself how to kiss a man. Feeling her way.

  As she slipped his shirt from his shoulders, she felt him shiver with anticipation. Backing up, she locked her eyes with his, willing herself to live in the moment. This moment. One where Dewley and McConahough’s farm didn’t exist.

  His hands cupped her shoulders as she undid his trouser buttons. Next she tackled his long underwear, sliding it off his shoulders and letting it fall down the length of his muscular body. She traced her finger along the slick pink of his bullet scar.

  She sounded uncommonly calm when she said, “You’ll have to recline so that I can get these boots off.”

  As though a man in a dream, he sank to the bed, and one by one she removed his boots and shucked off his clothes. She knew his body, the muscles, the scar, the thick dark hair on his chest. She had managed to clean him when he was fevered and delirious. But he’d been helpless, unaware.

  The sight of his erection should have left her shuddering, but this was Bret. His arousal was different—from another existence than Dewley’s and that of his demonic minions.

  This is Bret, she reminded herself as she unbuttoned her nightshirt, shrugged, and let it slip down. Every muscle in her body went tense, electric, her stomach aquiver. The cold air brought gooseflesh to her skin and tightened her nipples.

  Naked.

  Vulnerable.

  For a moment she panicked, fingers of terror eating at her. Flashes of memory behind her eyes.

  Bret whispered, “God Almighty, you are the most beautiful woman on earth.”

  And she came back to herself. To this night. To the reality in Bret’s eyes, brimming as they were with worship and love.

  She lowered herself to the bed beside him, heart beating furiously. Her throat dry. Fear pulsed, and her breath seemed to catch in her throat.

  Do it, Sarah. There’s only one way to vanquish the demons. Swallowing hard, she battled to keep from trembling as she reached down and grasped his hard penis, watching him tense.

  If she could be on top this first time, hold Bret’s eyes, it would be different. “I need to go slowly. Do this my way.”

  “Tonight is yours, Sarah. Anything you decide to give me is a gift.”

  And then, as if to finally murder the last of Dewley’s memory, she took a breath, let herself drown in Bret’s eyes, and lowered herself onto him.

  69

  February 14, 1866

  “For the love of mud, Butler.” Doc turned his head away and coughed, then dabbed at Butler’s face. “How many times have I told you to stay out of the street?”

  “Yankees took us by surprise.”

  Butler winced as Doc cleaned the cut on his cheek. Bruises were darkening on his jaw, and his ear was swollen. After prodding Butler’s ribs, he suspected that while not broken, they were most likely bruised from the kicking he had endured while down.

  Doc coughed again.

  With the cold weather, it was back, and getting worse. He shook his head, breath puffing in the chill only to vanish as it encountered the warmer air around their little tin heat stove. Doc blinked wearily as he huddled in his coat. On the snowy street beyond—if the path through the garbage could be called that—someone drove a wagon across the frozen, snow-covered ruts. The thing banged and rattled, trace chains clinking.

  “Butler, you and the men can’t just wander off.” Doc reached down and opened the stove, tossing the blood-smeared bandage inside to incinerate on the glowing coals. “Half the men in Denver are drunk, and the other half are on the way to getting there. I can’t take you with me everywhere I’m asked to go.”

  “Corporal Pettigrew wants to know why not? We’ve come all the way to Denver. We can help. Like when we doctored that Cheyenne warrior out on the trail. The men and I have watched you. You’d be surprised how much medicine we’ve learned.”

  Butler’s blue eyes—the right one surely going to swell shut by morning—wavered in his head, as though confused by the voices he was hearing inside.

  “When I’m asked to attend to someone sick, it distresses them to have you hovering in the background, carrying on conversations with the men about my patient’s condition.”

  Doc slapped his knees, wishing they had more wood for the stove. “But if I leave you, you wander off like you did this morning. At best you end up the laughingstock of drunks, or worse, like just happened, some bummer takes a board and beats you.”

  “Private Peterson thinks you need to have cards made. Like the ones used to introduce gentlemen.” Butler blinked, nodded, and said, “Yes, yes, I’ll tell him.” He looked at Doc. “You know Phil Vail, our scout? He has made the point that an ad in the Rocky Mountain News—and even an introduction to that man Byers—would have a most salubrious effect as you go about building a practice.”

  “Vail thinks this?” Doc asked dryly.

  “It’s like he says, people just don’t know what a splendid physician you are.”

  Doc thrust his hands out to the dying stove, as if to absorb the last of its warmth. “Butler, I’m working out of a tent. I show up looking like a ragamuffin. People don’t trust a physician who looks like a bummer. And finally there is you. In Saint Louis, you didn’t seem as delusional. Yes, you cadged a little work in the brothels, but I want more here. I want to build a quality surgery. To take on challenging cases. Better our—”

  “Taking that bullet out of Arne Stovensen’s belly was pretty challenging. And he’s still alive.”

  “Damn it, Butler, you can drag in all the penniless drunks and broken miners you want. Arne Stovensen? He had twenty-five cents to his name. That drunk you had me patch up last night? I set his broken arm, used up my last sling, and what? He’s gone. With my sling. And not a penny to show for it. You and I can’t survive giving away free medicine to the indigent and broke.”

  Butler blinked vacantly, his lips twitching.

  “Then, this morning, I think there’s a chance I can make a couple of dollars delivering a baby, and halfway through, I hear screams in the street, only to find you getting the lights beat out of you by two howling drunks! A physician’s trade is dependent referrals and reputation. I’m known as ‘that man with the crazy brother … the one who wears rags and has drunks for clients.’”

  Doc dropped his head into his hands. Weary and desolate.

  “Maybe in Golden City,” Butler said softly. “Kershaw says that good things are being said about it. It might become the capital someday. And then there is Central City and Idaho Springs up Clear Creek.”

  “And what will be different there?” Doc asked, his stomach gnawing at his ribs. They’d had less than a cup of oatmeal each that morning. What remained in the tin might make them each another cup for supper that night.

  “Mines are dangerous places to work,” Butler said solicitously. “Lots of injuries. I’m sure that physicians are always in short supply.”

  Doc endured a coughing fit, then whispered, “I had that one golden year in Memphis. You should have seen it, Butler. A real surgery, and a partner. I had a nice room. Fine clothes. What a difference it made knowing that I had a future. I felt young, bright, and alive.”

  “Phil Vail says that—”

  “I don’t give a damn!” Doc snapped. “Just shut up! I can’t deal with your insanity now.”

  Futility. That was him. Cored out and empty.

  Butler blinked, huddled defensively. His swelling lips moved soundlessly as he avoided Doc’s eyes. His hands were twitching spasmodically, eyes darting this way and that, as if fixing on his imaginary men where they crowded around the cold and cramped tent.

  The immensity of it overwhelmed. Came crashing down on Doc’s shoulders. Fact was, he wasn’t going to have his surgery. His
life was going to be spent caring for his crazy brother. Keeping him from being the brunt of jokes in the streets, and subject to beatings by bullies and ruffians.

  He had had his happiness. His one moment of respectability. During those brief days in Memphis, life had bloomed, each day a wondrous new possibility. He’d seen the totality of his fluorescence as a surgeon, teaching and being taught; that was medicine as he had only dreamed it could be. A mutual collaboration of like-minded colleagues, creating miracles with their scalpels and sutures.

  Ann Marie had filled his heart with hope and promise. Every last ounce of his love and being. Hers. Without reserve. She would have been the cornerstone of his entire life, her smile and freckles, the children they would have produced, and the home they would have built.

  “Sergeant, not now,” Butler whispered, breaking Doc’s reverie.

  He should have been wept out. Empty. But he fought tears. Wondered how, in this cold, miserable, and disgusting excuse for a city, they could manage to replenish.

  “I swear to God, Butler,” Doc whispered, “you are a living Greek tragedy. Something straight out of one of those plays you used to read. Sophocles. That’s who. We’re brothers that the gods, for whatever peevish reason, have sworn to destroy. Probably for some thievery or seduction Paw committed. Something so offensive the gods had to wreak their vengeance on you and me.”

  “Philip, I just need to get the men home.”

  “They were home, you lunatic fool! Why didn’t you dump your madness right there in the farmyard? Leave it to infest those shotgun-toting hicks? Why didn’t you stay to befuddle them with your invisible men as payback for taking our home?”

  He drove his fingers into the sides of his face, adding, “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t want it. I wanted away! Away from Paw and the pain he caused. Away from the memories. I didn’t want anything to do with family, and now you’re a damn millstone around my neck!”

  There, he’d said it. The thing he’d buried down deep inside his heart. And he’d uttered it with all the vitriol and anger that swelled and pooled like a pestilence within him.

  Silence.

  Doc’s anger crested, broke, and drained. In its wake lay only a sense of despicable guilt and desolation. That was followed by self-disgust. Damn it, it wasn’t as if the bullies in the street were the only ones to mistreat his mad brother. And ultimately, Butler was his brother.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “Oh, you didn’t hurt me none, but you should have seen how the men took it. You might as well have bucked and gagged them.”

  “The men?” Laughter took Doc by surprise. “I hurt the men? Your damned and infernal ghosts? Bruised their incorporeal sensitivities?”

  I’d do more than wound their egos. I’d flay them, scourge them, drive them from your soul, brother.

  But how did he attack phantoms when they hid inside his brother’s skull? The only alternative was to chop them out with an ax. But what ignorant and medieval kind of a solution was that?

  Not to say that doing so wouldn’t have made him feel better … but it didn’t exactly bode well for Butler’s recovery.

  When had he begun to embrace such a sick sense of humor?

  Or I could end the pain.

  He’d come so close that day in Camp Douglas before James and the rest hauled him back. But here, in Denver, on the dismal outskirts of the city, there was no steely-eyed guard with a ready rifle. No deadline. Here, he’d have to do it himself.

  He glanced down at the varnished wood of his surgical case. The one Butler had stolen during his “raid” at Fort Scott. All it would take was a scalpel. A small incision to open an artery. In cold like this, he’d hardly feel it, could bathe himself in the rising steam as his hot life pumped out onto the frozen tent floor. Dying from exsanguination wasn’t such a bad way to go. He had watched the process so many times. Seen the slowing, the fading of the senses as the eyes stilled. Breath went shallow, and the muscles relaxed.

  A graying that faded to darkness.

  Eternity.

  Peace.

  “Doc?”

  “Leave me to my fantasy, Butler.”

  “Doc? There’s a man here.”

  Doc lifted his head, took a deep breath in the cold air, and fought the need to cough. The damned stove was going cold. Even that small joy was failing him. He had no more wood to toss in for fuel. The frozen horse apples filling the streets were too full of ice to burn.

  The man outside was well dressed—a black broadcloth suit visible beneath the buffalo coat that hung open in front. A high beaver-felt hat—banded with a wide brown ribbon—topped his head. Long black hair, washed, hung over his collar. A fine black mustache flared in defiance of his thin face and arrogant black eyes.

  “It is said that you are a doctor,” he began in a well-modulated voice. Then his eyes flicked dismissively Butler’s way. “Word is that you are remarkably skilled, but inconvenienced by having to care for your brother.”

  “People know a lot about me.” Though why that should surprise him, he had no idea. Butler made enough public scenes they should have been the talk of the town.

  “Word does pass, sir.” The man looked around the shabby tent, at the rickety beds Doc had cobbled together on either side of the tin stove. This was everything. Doc had sold the wagon and mule back in November to pay for food.

  “How can I help you?” Doc asked, forcing himself to rise and offer his hand. “I’m Dr. Philip Hancock. I was trained in Boston, worked as a prominent surgeon in Memphis until the war. Plied my trade at Shiloh, though it was more akin to butchery, given the conditions.”

  “Macy Hare. I’ve got a job for you, if you’re a good enough surgeon.”

  “What is it?”

  “Woman with female troubles. Bleeding from the cunt.”

  Doc stopped short, a dull acceptance making him draw a breath. “A man doesn’t say a woman’s ‘bleeding from the cunt’ if she’s his wife or sister. I assume we are talking about a line girl?”

  Another penniless bit of human wreckage who couldn’t pay him enough to buy an evening meal?

  “She’s a burlesque dancer. Works for Big Ed Chase.” Hare crossed his arms. “You’ve heard of him?”

  “Runs the Cricket Club. Combination gambling hell, saloon, and variety theater. That, and I hear he has financial interests in several other gambling and recreational businesses. I guess he’s what they call a kingpin.”

  “The woman we’re concerned with, she’s a dancer at the Cricket who suddenly found herself in a motherly situation. That good enough for you? Or do I need to go find another doc?”

  “I’ll come. Do what I can. I’ll need to take my brother. If this morning’s any indication, I can’t leave him alone.”

  “The men and I will be fine, Philip.” Butler grinned. A gesture meant to reassure, which only served to open his split lip. “We can go scouting for firewood. Maybe see if we can find Yankees to raid.”

  “Bring him. We can find someone to keep an eye on him, I suspect,” Macy Hare said coolly.

  “You can carry my case, Butler.”

  Doc stepped out into the cold day. Sunlight glittered on the thin crusting of snow. Ice floated in the Platte. The distant Rockies rose in white splendor against the sky. Doc and Butler’s camp lay in the no-man’s-land beside the river’s rocky shores, just below the confluence with Cherry Creek. Ground abandoned as too dangerous after the ’64 flood. Several other tents were pitched close by, the occupants similarly pressed in circumstances.

  Hare led the way, winding through piles of empty and rusting tin cans, bottles, and accumulations of trash. Down at the water, a pack of dogs worried the frozen corpse of a dead mule. The occasional tang of offal, urine, and feces tickled the nose.

  Word was that the spring runoff would finally “cleanse” the entire river bottom.

  To Hare, Doc said, “My brother suffers from the fatigue. Not all casualties of the recent war were caused by
bullets or flying metal.”

  “Yep,” Hare said without concern as they climbed the bank and took the Cherry Creek trail. “He’s kind of the talk o’ the town. And looks like he’s keeping you down on your luck, Doctor. As to my problem? It seems that, like today, Doc Flannagan can’t always be found. And when he is, he’s generally engaged in finding the bottom of a whiskey bottle. A talent at which he excels.”

  “Even sober I wouldn’t trust him to lance a pimple with a—” Doc stopped himself short. “Excuse me. I have no right to vent my feelings about another physician.”

  Macy Hare bit off a smile, almost slipping on a patch of ice. The wind played with the silky hair on his fine buffalo coat. The thing looked remarkably warm.

  Macy said, “Big Ed says Flannagan does more damage than good. And somehow the drinks he credits against his account are perpetually more than he’s paid.”

  Doc looked back where Butler was following along, shivering, holding Doc’s surgical case as if it were a holy relic. “We all have our burdens to bear, Mr. Hare.”

  The dapper man shot him a sidelong inspection. “You look about at the end of your line, sir.”

  “The war didn’t leave me with much. But, to be honest, I didn’t expect that getting a new start would prove so difficult.”

  “If I might ask, what were your sympathies in the recent unpleasantness?”

  “Staying alive … and keeping as many of my fellows in that state as I could. A goal at which I often did not succeed.”

  “Big Ed served with the Colorado Volunteers. Under Colonel Chivington. He was proud to punish the red heathens hiding under the American flag at Sand Creek. Does that cause you any inconvenience of conscience, Doctor?”

  “Mr. Hare, once upon a time I had the luxury of moral outrage and an amount of rectitude. Since then life has managed to stamp, slap, and beat me free of any such silly preoccupations. My purpose, these days, is to ply my craft to the best of my ability, to allay suffering, and establish a practice that allows me and my brother to live in comfort.”

  “We might have a solution for your current circumstances.” Hare paused. “Assuming you have the requisite skills that some of the hoosieroons claim you have.”