Hop Alley

by Scott Phillips

  EDITOR’S ASSASSIN CALLED “MADWOMAN”

  District Attorney Vows: “SHE SHALL HANG.”

  Oft-Wedded Medusa’s Motives in Killing

  Beloved Editor Are No Doubt Political.

  “Where’s my grip?” I swung my legs off of the bed.

  “Packed,” Mrs. Fenster said. She went to fetch me a pitcher and a bowl for washing up. It wasn’t as bad a job as I’d have expected after a jailbreak and several days abed; the widow Cowan had sponge-bathed me while I slept, having detected at close quarters an offensive odor distinct from the cadaver’s.

  Once I had washed, shaved, and dressed I took a survey of the studio and gallery. There was no possibility of hauling the inventory or equipment, nor of having them shipped, and once again I was faced with the prospect of running out of a place I had adopted as my own; at least this time I had the opportunity to pack a few articles of clothing. I told Mrs. Fenster and Lem they could have it all in lieu of severance pay.

  “Rent’s paid here until the end of the month, so get it out before then. Or perhaps you could come to an agreement with Mrs. Banbury and stay.”

  She snorted. “And who’d make the pictures? I can’t. The boy’s barely got the smarts to pour that stuff onto the plates and dip ’em into the chemicals, he doesn’t know how to have people sit, or what to make a picture of.”

  This was hard to dispute, and the boy nodded, unoffended at his auntie’s assessment of his capacities. I began to scratch out a list of photographers and dealers in photographic goods, and a rough approximation of what I thought my gear might bring.

  She balked when she saw the amounts on the page. “That’s too much for severance, Mr. Sadlaw. How’s about I send you half the proceeds?”

  “Don’t know where I’ll go and if I sent word when I got there, it might be intercepted.”

  She nodded. “I might keep some of the chairs and the sofa for myself. And the pianoforte,” she said.

  “I didn’t realize you played.”

  She seemed almost wistful as she gazed upon it. “I don’t but they’re nice to have in a parlor.”

  I hied to my bedroom where I lifted a floorboard and took from its hiding place a roll of bills. Eighty dollars; not a princely sum but more than I’d had when I fled Cottonwood, and this time I left behind me no loved ones, only a business and some objects of monetary value. In a decade hardly anyone would remember I’d been through, much less regret my absence.

  TEN

  EXEUNT, PURSUED BY A BEAR

  I considered heading eastward, but between my Ohio upbringing and my experiences in the war the region held few happy associations; besides, I’d never seen the Pacific and had heard that it was bluer and colder than the Atlantic, and that seemed sufficient motivation for a westerly trajectory. For thirty dollars I purchased an old roan mare, since I didn’t want to board the train in Denver, and rode her to Cheyenne, in Wyoming, passing along the way the Greeley Colony. Its pious and shiftless founder had lately died an ignominious death in the western half of the state at the hands of the Utes, the finest horsemen in the West and possibly the world, whom he had stupidly tried to turn into dirt farmers. I didn’t stop to inquire as to the current prosperity of the colony’s residents.

  Arriving in Laramie I sold the mare at only a five-dollar loss, which I counted as a bargain. I hadn’t bothered to name her and she seemed unruffled by our parting. The next day I boarded a train on the Union Pacific bound for California, and as it hurtled westward I pondered whether I ought to adopt yet another new name or keep Sadlaw for a while. As William Ogden of Kansas I was wanted for murder, a crime for which there exists no statute of limitations and for which I was liable to be extradited and hanged if found out; but as William Sadlaw I was wanted, as far as I knew, only by the city of Denver, and only as an accessory. It takes time and effort to acclimate oneself to a new name, and as Sadlaw had been my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, and as I had been fond of her as in my childhood, I felt inclined to keep it.

  BEFORE WE’D CROSSED out of Wyoming I caught the attention of a pair of children, a brother and sister about six and eight years of age respectively. They climbed over the banquette in front of me and began to stare at me, for want of any more compelling diversion. Their mother sat a few rows ahead of me, apparently asleep, and they took my silence and failure to acknowledge their presence as a sign that I wanted to be friends.

  “We’re going to Stockton in California,” the girl said. “It’s where our papa’s family live.”

  “He’s dead,” said the boy.

  “Throwed out of a window,” said the girl, eyes wide with wonder.

  “By a man he did business with. He ruined him, the man said.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “Just as well. Our uncle says Papa would have gone to prison anyway if he hadn’t been killed.”

  The girl’s eyes widened further. “The policeman who came to our house to tell us said he broke every single bone in his body, including his skull and all his fingers and toes.”

  Her curls were all done up in pink ribbons, and both she and the boy wore clean and well-made clothing, suggesting a social station that would have sustained irreparable damage from a felony conviction.

  “Where are you coming from?” I asked.

  “Chicago,” said the boy.

  “Our papa worked at the Board of Trade. It’s an awful lot of money he’s supposed to have stolen.”

  “Might as well hang for a pound as a penny,” I said.

  Their mother, having roused herself and found her babes gone from her side, arose and made her way back to us.

  “I’m sorry, sir, for my children. Come back and sit,” she ordered them.

  “Not at all, madam. I enjoyed our interview.”

  She favored me with a weary smile tinged with sadness and affection for her tots. “They’re without much to do on a long ride like this.” She had a round, pretty face with a sore on her lip that I hoped hadn’t arisen from another of her late husband’s vices. She was flushed and slightly sweaty from her nap; four stray tendrils of wet hair stuck to her forehead, which bore the imprint of a railway pillow’s braided ornament.

  “Lovely children,” I said, feeling an unwanted twinge of pity for her.

  “That is true,” she said without joy or enthusiasm, and she took each child by the hand and trudged back up to their own banquette and took her seat again with an unconscious sigh.

  AFTER A ROUGH night’s sleep I awoke to find the train slowing on approach to the promisingly named town of Ogden, Utah, and the mangy conductor limped through the car announcing a stop of one hour.

  “Is there a restaurant at the station?” asked the widowed mother as she shod her drowsy charges.

  “In a manner of saying so,” the conductor said without looking her way. He had white sideburns thick as squirrels’ tails and a pair of pince-nez with only one lens. “Man that runs it’s an old army cook. I wouldn’t eat there if I valued my health.”

  THE WIDOW DECIDED to stay on board and feed her children from a stack of stale-looking graham crackers wrapped in waxed paper, but I was anxious for a stretch and soon found myself seated at a long counter and addressing the old cook. A good many of my fellow had descended, but only five of us sat down in the cramped dining room to eat. While I ate a pair of fried eggs that were a shade greasier than I preferred, the illshaved, slovenly cook grumbled at length about our conductor, with whom he had some sort of continuing grudge involving the cook’s sister, long deceased.

  “Nothing wrong with them eggs, is there?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, eager to avoid a long discourse.

  “Sure there ain’t. He runs down my food every time he passes through. I wrote a letter to the president of the railroad himself, and all I got back was a letter from a secretary telling me to go fuck myself. Pardon my French, ma’am,” he said to a large, dainty woman dressed in lavender who affected deafness and continued working on
her plate of ham. “I wouldn’t let my sister Sal marry him on account of he was a Methodist, and Methodist and Baptist don’t mix.”

  “You’re not Mormon?” I asked.

  “No, sir. Primitive Baptist.”

  “I can’t help but notice you don’t serve coffee here.”

  “They won’t let me. I don’t mind, though, that’s one place where I agree with them. That and tobacco and alcohol. Nothing but badness. And I have seen things on my travels, Mister, that would make you turn away from all those things. After the war I spent ten years in California, from Oregon on down to Mexico, and the entire state was full of such vile wickedness it would make you rebuke those intoxicants too.”

  “I’ve never been, but that’s where I’m headed.”

  “Beware, friend. A wicked, wicked place.”

  I nodded. As I hadn’t yet chosen what part of the state to start my new life, I thought this man might be as good an oracle as any to determine where to light. “And what would you say was the worst part of the state, Mister? South or north?”

  “Well, sir, you pose a difficult question in many ways, for there are pockets of blight and sin up and down the state like pustules, each bad in its own way. But I’ll tell you, I’ve never encountered a worse or baser bunch than those in San Francisco. Debauchery and vice, and all in the name of mammon. It was gold that cursed the town, sir, and the more gold they brought up from the ground, the more Satan smiled.”

  I nodded and thanked him and finished my eggs and paid. I left him a whole nickel for a tip, grateful as I was for his advice, and as I boarded the train I found the idea growing on me: William Sadlaw Photographic Gallery, San Francisco, Cal., Sittings by Appointment Only. By Friday I’d have arrived, by Monday at the latest I’d have leased a studio and equipment, and I would be back in business.

  My troubles would be over.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All of the cities in this novel—Denver, Golden, Omaha, Greeley—are figments of my imagination and differ from their real-life counterpoints as my whims dictated. For a great account of Denver in this period, I wholeheartedly recommend "Hell's Belles," by Clark Secrest (University Press of Colorado). Rick Lasarow, MD, long ago consulted with me on the behaviors of certain characters. Finally, sadly, without my friend Cort McMeel's encouragement this book never would have been finished. He left us way too soon.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Scott Phillips is the author of The Ice Harvest, The Walkaway, Cottonwood, The Adjustment, and Rake. He was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas and lived for many years in France. He now lives with his wife and daughter in St. Louis, MO.