by Daren Wang
* * *
“We will go west,” Katia said. “Ohio.”
She held her carpetbag on her knees, swaying as the train rounded a bend.
“I’m going to find them,” Harry said.
“You should tell the police,” Katia said. “They will handle it.”
His arm throbbed and he felt weak. He wished he could just lie down and sleep.
“I am supposed to be the police.” He grimaced.
“You bled too much to mess with them,” she said. “Let’s keep going. I have a little money saved. Enough to start with.”
“It’s not about the money,” he said.
He had barely been able to stand when he got to the Willises’ kitchen door. Katia had bandaged the wound, left him in the kitchen for just a minute, then returned with her bag in hand.
“We are not coming back,” she announced, and he knew she was right.
She had helped him to the highway where she flagged down a passing wagon that had taken them to Alden. Doc Pride had cleaned and stitched the wound and wrapped the arm again.
“You should rest,” he had told him.
“We are not staying here one moment longer than we have to,” Katia said, and even the doctor knew not to argue. They boarded the train in Alden.
The line ended at the Exchange Street station and she helped him stand and step off the train. He leaned against an iron post.
“I will find the cheapest way to get us to Ohio,” she said, heading for the ticket booth.
Harry grunted and headed for Exchange Street.
She reached for his good arm, but he winced and pulled away.
“You will get yourself killed,” she said, struggling to hold onto him and carry her heavy bag.
“I’m not going to let them get away with it,” he said, looking back at her.
He motioned to the luggage check in the station.
“Leave that thing,” he said, but she frowned and shook her head.
“We’ll go see Compson,” he said, exasperated. “We can rest on his boat. It’s nice there. He won’t let them get away with this. He’ll tell us where to find them.”
He turned and headed toward the docks. She shouted at his back in German until she finally ran to catch up with him.
“I should have stopped this a long time ago,” Harry said. “I shouldn’t have run from Keith. I let that big knife scare me. I never should have run.”
“You could not have stopped them,” Katia said.
“I could have tried,” he said.
The midsummer sun baked his back, and he sweated into his shirt. He had felt light-headed since he’d looked down to see the long slice in his arm, seen the muscle and skin and blood opened up to the world like a slaughtered animal.
He ran his hand over the bandage.
Gunshots popped in the distance, echoing on the quiet street.
Harry was used to the city smelling like an unemptied chamber pot, but today there was another smell, a different type of smoke. Gunpowder and wood and something more bitter and ugly.
He stopped himself in the middle of Seneca Street, shaking his head, trying to understand what was wrong.
“It’s so quiet,” Katia said, coming up beside him. “Is it always this way?”
Harry blinked. That was it. The streets were abandoned. He was missing the throng that greeted him on every trip he’d taken into the city.
A policeman on a horse galloped by.
“There’s a riot going on,” he shouted. “Down by the canal. Get the hell out of the streets.”
Before Katia could say anything, Harry sprinted toward the docks.
There were more guards around the Abigail than he’d ever seen before, but the one stationed at the gangplank recognized him and waved him aboard.
Compson glanced at them as they were led onto the top deck, but turned his back to them to keep staring at a red glow to the east. He had a full tumbler of bourbon in his hand.
“That is the spark,” he said. “The city will burn tonight. If we do not win on the battlefield, we will help the Union tear itself apart.”
Harry blinked. “I’m looking for your men,” he said. “Keith and the others. They killed the pastor and his wife. Damn near killed me.”
He held up his bandaged arm. “I’m going to take them back to Town Line and string them up at the crossroads.”
Compson chuckled. “I doubt you could manage that,” he said. “You do not look well, Mr. Strauss. And those three are capable, to say the least. I have many men at my disposal, but I had to search far and wide to find any that would be quite so thorough.”
“Where are they?” Harry said.
“I haven’t seen them today,” Compson said, gesturing toward the red glow. “But your friend Keith has his orders, and that’s his handiwork. I have quite an agenda for that trio over the next week or so. They’ll be quite busy.”
“They’re your men,” he said. “You need to help me bring them in. You’re responsible for what they done.”
Compson frowned. “How am I responsible?”
“They’re your men.”
“Am I responsible for everything you’ve ever done? Of course not. But you are as much my man as they.”
“I ain’t your man,” Harry said. “I’m through with you.”
“I’m sorry to hear about the pastor and his lovely wife,” Compson said. He sipped from the crystal tumbler. “He was a true believer, I’ll give him that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s prudent to move the Abigail across the river. Riots, you know. You can pull the trigger, but you cannot aim.”
He gestured to a man standing nearby.
“Show these two to the dock and tell the captain to get us under way.” He turned his back on them to watch the fires grow in the city.
They were ushered off the boat, and watched as the boat cast off and headed out of the harbor.
“They’ll be down by the canal, where the riots are,” Harry said.
“No!” Katia said. “We are getting on a train.”
Harry shook his head and headed north.
“I am leaving!” Katia shouted at him.
Harry turned back to her.
“You were right,” he shouted. “Damn it, you’ve been right all along. You’ve been saying we should go for months. I should have listened. You were right. Tomorrow I will listen to you, and I will do as you say. And I will the next day, too. And the day after that. But tonight, I gotta do this. Don’t you understand? The Zubrichs were my friends. I brought Keith and those other two into town. It was me that got them killed. If I don’t do something, I ain’t no better than Leander Willis.”
He pulled away from her and headed north toward the canal.
Katia watched his back, and then rushed to catch up.
“Tomorrow you will listen,” she said.
Fire wagons surrounded a burning warehouse near the canal. A dead horse lay in the street, still harnessed to its delivery cart. Men stood in the streets watching the fire. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, and Harry hoped it came from an animal. He found a lead pipe amongst the shards of shattered glass in the street and measured its weight as he would a baseball bat.
At Dug’s Dive, the police stood by as half a dozen white men dragged a black man into the streets. As the night grew darker, the mobs split and moved through the streets more freely. Smoke rose over the skyline, and gunfire echoed around them. Harry pulled Katia into an alley as a dozen shouting men streamed by them in a street near the commercial slip.
Harry poked his head back into the street.
“We got thirty of them blocked up in their church,” someone shouted. “We’re going to burn it to the ground.”
“That murdering son of a bitch,” Harry said, setting off at a trot behind the man. “That’s where he’ll be.”
Katia followed with her heavy bag.
The burning smell was worse as they headed east. They passed a house collapsed in on itself, its dying flam
es throwing gruesome light on the surrounding scorched trees.
They followed Broadway east until they came up behind the mob.
Over the line of torches and clubs held aloft, Harry could make out a half dozen black men standing on the steps of the little brick church, shoulder to shoulder, some with pipes or sticks in hand, others empty-handed.
Michigan Street stretched empty between them, covered in shattered glass, shimmering in the torchlight.
Harry pointed to a peg-legged man near the center of the line.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Harry asked.
Katia looked at the line of men.
“There’s Palmer, too,” she said.
“A reading from the book of Luke.” Keith’s familiar drawl rang clear in the night.
He sat on Zubrich’s old swayback horse in the midst of the Broadway mob, his bowie knife held over his head, flashing red.
“‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’”
He laughed loudly.
“Judgment day is here! The Bible says you must have made good with the Lord by the dawn of that day, but I’m more merciful than your God. I’m going to give all one last chance. Y’all just go back into your church, kneel down in your little pews, and pray for forgiveness for your sins. That way, when I send this purifying fire through, you’ll be in my good graces.”
“I can’t see the other two,” Harry said, scanning the mob.
“There’s too many of them,” Katia said.
The voices shouting at each other across the empty expanse of Michigan Avenue got louder, and a bottle smashed against the brick face of the church.
“I don’t care,” Harry said. “I’m going after that bastard.”
“No!” Katia said, grabbing at his arm, but Harry pulled away.
“Stay there,” Harry said, pointing at an alley. “Don’t make a sound.”
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” she shouted, but he ignored her and started toward the mob.
The mob moved into Michigan Street, clubs and torches held overhead. Harry hefted the pipe as best he could and stepped into the street.
The sound of the shot, so close and contained between the tall buildings of Broadway, seemed louder and echoed longer than any he’d ever heard. He fell to the ground instinctively.
“Get down,” he shouted, turning toward Katia.
She was already kneeling, open bag in front of her, aiming a pistol at the mob.
The swayback, suddenly riderless, scampered and bucked, knocking two men to the ground.
“Run,” someone shouted.
Immediately there were feet and legs around Harry as he tried to climb to his feet. Katia fired again toward the intersection.
Harry lifted his pipe, and ran toward the center of the splintering mob.
He found Keith at the end of a trail of bloody cobblestones, crawling toward where his knife lay yards away.
Harry kicked him in the face, knocking him onto his back.
Keith’s eyes took a minute to focus on his attacker. “You?” he said, coughing up blood.
Joe came up to stand behind Harry.
“Where are the other two?” Harry demanded.
“Weren’t you the one telling me you’d wanted the niggers out of there?” Keith asked.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Harry asked.
“Didn’t you say you wanted the niggers out of Town Line?” Keith asked again.
Harry kicked him again.
“Or did you come for this?” He reached into his coat pocket, taking out a blood-soaked wad of bills.
“This shinplaster?” He laughed between coughs. “Worthless Confederate script. You couldn’t buy a poke from a fifty-cent whore with all this. Compson made a fool of you.”
Harry kicked the money and it fluttered into the night.
“Fuck the money,” Harry said. “This is about killing the Zubrichs. Where are the other two?”
Keith looked to where Katia stood next to Harry, the pistol still hanging from her hand. He winced.
“Like I told you, they’re after the niggers in Town Line,” he said. “And the safe.”
“Safe?” Harry blinked.
“My God! Mr. Willis!” Katia gasped. “The farm.”
“I’m going after them,” Harry said, moving toward the horse.
“No, him,” Katia said, pointing at Joe.
Joe looked back, confused.
“Let him go,” Katia said. “You can’t go back there. You’re too weak.”
Harry nodded, wrangling the animal. “There’s two killers back in Town Line going after Mr. Willis’s money,” he said, leading the horse over to Joe.
“Leander stole all the money,” Joe said, as Harry helped him mount the horse. “There’s nothing left.”
“That don’t matter,” Harry said.
Katia handed the pistol up to Joe.
“Take this,” she said. “It’s Mary’s. I took it when I left.”
HOMEGUARD
Dear Mary,
Your letters finally found me here, and they mean more to me than I can say. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to respond, and I’m sorry I’ve worried you for so long.
I’m grateful for all the news clippings you’ve sent along. I wish that some of it was good.
I’m in Aurora, and there’s about ten thousand people here, but nobody can say where this place is. Some say it’s in the Nevada territory, others that it’s in the state of California.
If a week goes by without someone getting shot, people get worried that things are getting too civilized.
Everything here is brown, but the mountains are pretty. I wish you could see them.
I moved all the way west a few months ago. Before that, I was in the desert for near on a year, I think. I lost track. I was passing through and found an empty shack next to a spring, and just stayed. It got mighty lonely out there, but the mornings were something to see.
I started a livery. Everyone here is getting ready to strike it rich, but I spend my days shoveling horseshit. The horses don’t expect me to talk much, and for that I’m grateful. Most of them haven’t seen any kindness for a long time, and there’s real pleasure in treating them good.
There’s grit in everything here. I wake up and it feels like a layer of dust has settled on my face. I miss green things. I miss the taste of those yellow apples from that twisted old tree behind your barn, and I miss watching the creek swell when it rains.
Even the fish aren’t right here. I’d give anything for a brown trout pulled from Cayuga creek.
A while back, a nag came in so badly beaten that I wanted to throttle its owner. I held my hand, but got my wish. He got shot down that night.
Her name is Dusty, and after a lot of work, she’s gotten better. She still ain’t right in the head and probably never will be, but I can’t think of much in my life that’s made me happier than watching her spirit come back.
Me and Dusty took a ride down into California a couple weeks back. We kept going until we got to the ocean. There was a mound of something dead there on the rocks. It was the size of man, but it didn’t have much shape at all. The sky and the ocean were the same gray and the cold was different than it is back home. Damp and hard.
I sat by the water for a long time. It sounded like the water was alternately shouting and hissing at me. It told me what I needed to know, and I don’t aim to see it again. Me and Dusty turned around and came back here.
You’ll think I’m crazy, but I miss the snow. If I had anything to my name, I’d surely give it up to see a fresh Town Line snowfall. To wake to that perfect white blanket covering the fields, the whole world made new overnight. It’s then that you know God forgives, that there’s mercy in this world.
I’ve taken to using my real name again. They would probably find my history quaint if they knew it. You can write me again here.
Except for you, there’s not a human soul in this wo
rld I’m much interested in. I wish that you could have seen the things I’ve seen. You might help me understand what they mean.
YOURS,
CHARLIE
Mary thought she would feel Leander’s blows to the door for the rest of her life. She had closed the door and wrapped her arms around herself, collapsing against the solid wood, and had sobbed as each one jolted through her body like a bullet.
Katia came down from her room to stand over Mary, her mouth agape in horror.
“I can’t let him in,” Mary pled, looking up at her. “Forgive me, I can’t.”
“You’ll burn,” Katia hissed, and left her sprawled at the foot of the door.
She heard him climb off the porch and still she lay there, knowing that the house girl was right.
She made her way to her room, but she did not sleep that night.
She was up before dawn, and was pouring herself coffee when Joe found her in the kitchen. They sat together at the kitchen table, and Joe spoke of the day’s work, but she could see in his eyes that Leander had found his way down to the men’s cabin. Katia came down from her room and announced her presence by slamming the iron skillet onto the stove, and both Mary and Joe left without another word.
Mary went through the day, trying to ignore the goings-on around Leander’s presence, Katia’s running back and forth to the workmen’s cabin, her father following her out there as well, the men’s discomfort at dinner as they avoided mentioning the man they were hiding.
Katia disappeared after dinner was on the table, and Mary spent a long evening cleaning up the kitchen.
After she put her father to bed, she slipped out the back door and headed into the woods.
She could hear the men gathered around the fire as she walked the path to the little pond.
Joe was there, as he always seemed to be when she needed him most.
The little cabin was lit from within, but he sat on the ground in front of a fire. She lay on the ground next to him, breathing the applewood smoke and staring into the full moon.
