A Good Man

by Guy Vanderhaeghe

  “God, Dunne, you know perfectly well who I am. It’s Tarr. Randolph Tarr.”

  “If you’re Tarr, step in then.”

  When he enters, Dunne notes Lawyer Tarr looks to be a little under the weather, face puffy and pale, the skin under his eyes baggy and dark. Dunne points to a chair on the other side of the table. Tarr sits, holds his hands tightly clenched in his lap.

  Dunne’s visitor clears his throat. “I heard you were back. But since I got no news from you I assumed you didn’t locate him.”

  “I told you he wouldn’t be found there. If you and Harding would turn me loose, I’d find Gobbler Johnson sure enough. It might take time, a little money. But you got to meddle, tell me where to go.” Dunne shrugs. “But I reckon whoever pays the piper gets to call the tune.”

  “That was Harding’s call. He said Johnson always believed there was gold in the Cypress Hills. He figured he would be up there prospecting.”

  “You ought to have done what I said from the start. A man takes a shot at you through your office window, people see him doing a skedaddle down the street – that’s attempted murder. You see to it a reward gets posted.”

  “Bullet lodged three feet in the wall above my head. The sheriff called it a calculated miss, said the county doesn’t squander funds to capture a man who lets off a little steam firing a warning shot.”

  “County don’t care where the money comes from as long as it don’t come out of their pockets. Harding could have put up a thousand with a little extra for the sheriff, the judge. A reward brings bounty law into play. Gives me a legal right to go after Johnson. Bring him in dead if need be. But no, you and Harding got to try to handle it on the cheap.”

  “Johnson came after me, not Harding, and Harding’s not the sort of man who reaches into his pocket for anybody’s sake but his own. And you know I can’t raise a lump sum of that size.”

  “So why you here, then? I ain’t interested in listening to you cry over spilt milk.”

  Tarr licks his lips. “I found this under my office door when I opened up this morning.” He takes out a piece of paper from his pocket and slides it across the table. Dunne picks it up. It’s stiff as a shingle, covered with words snipped from printed material and pasted to the paper. Dunne reads it aloud. “ ‘See to it I get back what is mine or your women will burn in their beds I will chop them to bits I will drown them like kittens depend on it I will not touch you so as you have to bury them and know what it is to have something dear taken from you.’ ”

  Tarr says, “I checked my copy of Webster’s Dictionary. Most of the font matches. Other bits seem to have been cut from the Fort Benton Record. All the personal pronouns, the I’s, the you’s, must have come from a novel.”

  “Ain’t you the detective,” says Dunne.

  Tarr says, “If I showed this letter to the sheriff, perhaps the authorities might reconsider offering a reward.” There is no certainty in his voice.

  “Good luck but it ain’t going to happen,” says Dunne, and waits.

  “I suppose you’re right.” Tarr gives him a hopeful, pleading glance. “I’m out of my depth here. Even if I were a man with the hardness, the will – I have a legal practice to run, I can’t be everywhere at once …” He trails off, struggling to contain his emotion. “I have no one else to call on to protect my womenfolk, Mr. Dunne, but you. I need help. The man is a lunatic.”

  “Well,” says Dunne placidly, “a man is apt to go that way when he loses something rightfully his. You got to look at it from Johnson’s side of the fence. Here’s a man didn’t trust the lawyers up in Helena to defend his gold claim because he believes they’re all in the pocket of your friend Mr. Harding. So old Gobbler comes to Fort Benton to hire himself a lawyer. Puts his trust in Mr. Randolph Tarr to represent him. But Mr. Harding – what’s the word for it – suborns Lawyer Tarr, and Lawyer Tarr goes all left-footed in court, doesn’t present the case proper, neglects to lay out evidence, and Johnson loses his gold claim. There’s something puts a itch on a man needs scratching, ain’t it?” He lifts his eyebrows inquisitively. There is no response to the question. “Now,” resumes Dunne, “that brings us to me, who’s also been deprived of what’s rightfully his. The seven hundred dollars that was due me for services rendered in Chicago walked away in your pocket when you done your flit from there. But to my surprise when I rolled into Benton I seen your name up on a signboard, Randolph Tarr, Esq., Attorney at Law. I figured you’d pay that debt, settle up like a honest man. But till this day I ain’t collected nothing but promises from you, and none of them fulfilled.”

  “The thing is,” interjects Tarr, “I walked away from Chicago absolutely busted. I had nothing in my pockets. You know very well that everything I owned was ashes. Seven houses gone up in the Great Fire, my own house burned to the foundations. My creditors ready to pick the flesh from my bones.”

  “Boo hoo, life is hard. So who owes me? You, or Mother O’Leary’s cow?”

  “I have always admitted my obligation. You’ll get your money. It’s just a question of time. Moving here incurred considerable expense. My daughter needed to be provided a suitable home. Life as a widower was not to my taste, I married again … these things eat up money. You have no idea. But I assure you, I’m good for it.”

  “If you want me to play broody hen to your chicks, keep them safe from Mr. Gobbler Johnson, you better be good for it,” says Dunne. “Two dollar a day, cash on the barrelhead. And the day that money ain’t handed over is the day I walk away. You understand?”

  “Yes. Certainly. Each and every day. Depend on it.”

  “And here’s another thing, Mr. Tarr. I know your opinion of me, even now when you’re licking my bum hole. You think I’m dirt.”

  “That’s not true –”

  “I ain’t a fool. You ain’t never so much as invited me into your home. So I know what I am to you, a guard dog. I’ll sleep on your porch as long as the fine weather lasts, so’s not to bring fleas into your house. But don’t think you can starve this dog. He’ll sink his teeth in you.” He pushes the letter back to Tarr with his forefinger. “If that’s agreed, I’ll see you crack of dawn tomorrow.”

  “Why certainly that’s agreed. Thank you, Mr. Dunne. I am forever in your debt.”

  “All right then,” says Dunne. “You best be gone. I take it your womenfolk is alone.”

  “Oh no, Lieutenant Blanchard is paying my daughter Celeste a call. I thought them in good hands with a military man in the house.” Tarr rises to his feet. “But I should return without delay. And let me say again how happy I am to put this in your hands, the hands of a sterling professional.”

  Dunne shepherds Tarr to the door, closes it on his visitor’s last ingratiating goodbye, and locks it. For good measure, he jams a chair under the knob. Then he undresses, kills the lamp, crawls into his cot, and draws the blankets up to his chin.

  Dunne’s breathing is quick and shallow. Sometimes, when he falls silent after talking so much, as he has tonight with Tarr, he will feel a voice slowly pulling free of his body, little by little, and go wafting about the room. The voice is flat and uninflected. He hears it now. It warns him that someone is following. Each time, a picture hesitantly takes form in the ether to keep company with the words. He sees it hovering above him, a daguerreotype lifted too early from the developing bath. He can’t make out what the figure in the picture is, whether it’s a man or woman. He perceives movement around the knees, a skirt billowing, or perhaps snow churning as a man plunges through drifts. Around the head and shoulders of the hazy figure a multitude of bright white flecks are swarming, chemical spotting, or perhaps snowflakes whirling out of a grey and heavy sky.

  FOUR

  IT IS HARD FOR Ada Tarr to say what is producing the fine sweat she has to dab from her upper lip every few minutes – the searing sun pummelling the shingles, or thoughts of her husband’s former client, Gobbler Johnson. Randolph has landed his family in a predicament; proof of how dire that predicament is has been
visible on her porch for a number of days in the person of Mr. Dunne, a shotgun laid across his massive thighs. She can see him now from her parlour window.

  She had married three years ago, at the age of twenty-seven. By then she had reconciled herself to a life of spinsterhood. It wasn’t her looks that had kept suitors at bay. Like any young woman, she had taken stock of herself in a looking glass, and concluded that if she was not a conventionally pretty woman, the right pair of eyes might grant she was a striking one. Ada knows she possesses a good figure. Her father had liked to say she had a smile that could light up a coal bin. She is aware that lamplight lends an auburn tint to her dark and abundant hair. Her lips are full, although the upper one is a bit short. She no longer despairs of the freckles that she had tried to bleach away with buttermilk compresses when she was thirteen, buttermilking herself so frequently the housecats began to eye her like a dish of cream. Finally, her mother had put her foot down. “Ada,” she had said, “do not presume to undo God’s work. Never think the Lord makes mistakes.” Ada is not convinced her beloved mother was right to give God so much credit. Living with freckles is one thing, but whatever was the Lord thinking when he gave her Randolph Tarr for a husband?

  Of course, her mother’s firm answer would be, “God did not impose Mr. Tarr on you, my dear. You accepted him.”

  If she had not been so miserable as a governess in the Harding household, would she have leapt so quickly to accept Mr. Tarr’s proposal of marriage? That, Ada admits, isn’t the only explanation for her rashness. Randolph in his mid-fifties is still a striking man, with a thick mane of pewter-coloured hair, a high-bridged aquiline nose, and an erect and commanding carriage that any United States senator would envy. His self-assurance, his refined manners, his gifts of perfume, handkerchiefs, and chocolates, the little kindnesses offered her during their courting days had cast him in a very favourable and flattering light when compared to the wind-burned and ham-fisted young farm boys who had come to woo her in the front parlour bastock Ohio. More to the point, Randolph never fled the scene the way they had done after hearing her opinion on some topic such as Russian objectives in the Dardanelles, or the Dred-Scott decision. Her bluestocking ways had put them to flight.

  Randolph Tarr had listened to her opinions, or appeared to listen to them, with the utmost attention. Back then Ada had judged that the difference in their ages – more than twenty years – might be a requirement for her happiness. She reasoned that a woman encouraged by her parents to have strong views, to be independent, was better off with an older man, someone confident and accomplished enough not to be frightened by a woman with ideas of her own. Randolph had seemed a man of substance, but on that score she couldn’t have been further from the mark.

  Shortly after their wedding, she had begun to learn what sort of man her husband was. Their brief honeymoon was spent in Helena; Randolph claimed his thriving law practice in Fort Benton could not spare him more than a few days. When the surrey rolled to a stop before her new home, Randolph had said in a most casual, offhand fashion, “Inside, my dear, I have a surprise for you. The nicest little package imaginable. My daughter, Celeste, whom you will adore and who will adore you. Let us go inside and the two of you can become acquainted.”

  Ada was struck dumb. She could not believe she had heard him correctly. Or perhaps this was his strange idea of a joke; he had a rather heavy-handed sense of humour. He had made no mention of being father to a child. But there inside the house, any hopes she had had that he might be giving her a leg-pull smashed up against the hard fact of Celeste, a little blond, vacuously blue-eyed porcelain doll of sixteen, to whom he announced the news of his marriage right then and there, in the same breezy fashion he had informed Ada of her step into motherhood. It was callous beyond belief; it defied the imagination. One glance at Celeste confirmed that she, like her new stepmother, had been kept in the dark about the other’s existence.

  Given the volatility of girls Celeste’s age, Ada had expected a blaze of fireworks, but no eruption came. In an instant, the girl swept surprise from her face, simply put out her hand, and said, “I am very pleased to know you, Mrs. Tarr.” Ada’s bewilderment was so complete, she was so at a loss for words, that she found herself responding in the same numb fashion, greeting her new daughter with a formal handshake and a frozen smile.

  But that night, when Randolph and she had retired to their bedroom, Ada had lit into him, ferociously saying, “What were you thinking, why have you resorted to this preposterous secrecy?” And Randolph had assumed an innocent, blank look and said that since they were so much in love, what difference could it really make? When she had continued to press him, he had grown frustrated and unleashed his nasty lawyer’s tongue on her. He had coldly remarked, “You know, Ada, Mr. Harding did not offer me congratulations on my marriage. But he did thank me for taking a very difficult woman off his hands. I’m beginning to see what he meant.”

  It has taken Ada a good deal of time to understand her husband. What she has concluded is that he will do almost anything to dodge or delay unpleasantness. He likes people to think well of him, and when they don’t, he finds it inexplicable. He hopes problems will miraculously evaporate. Failing to mention Celeste was prompted by Randolph’s fear that his fiancée would balk, have second thoughts about his suitability as a husband. Only at the last possible moment, when there was no escaping the corner he had put himself in, had he blithely broken the news, behaving as if it were nothing but a tiny oversight and that any reasonable person would accept it as such. When she hadn’t, he had struck back cruelly because it was necessary for him to make himself believe in his own innocence. Ada suspects these habits of mind are at the root of his troubles with Gobbler Johnson.

  As to Celeste’s unusual reaction when they met, at first Ada had assumed the girl was so under her father’s thumb she dared not evidence surprise at anything he had chosen to do. Now she knows this was not the case at all. It is Randolph who is under Celeste’s thumb, although she seldom feels the need to squash him. Her stepdaughter is so lethargic, so unengaged with life that she is generally content to listlessly reflect back to people what they regard as proper and fitting. However, once in a blue moon, if Celeste feels her interests endangered, then those who threaten them better duck.

  Perhaps Celeste, who has few preoccupations besides her hair, her clothes, and entertaining young gentlemen who admire her almost as much as she admires herself, was quickly pleased to have another woman in the house, assumed the two of them would naturally become best of friends, imagined jolly times giggling about her beaux, dressing each other’s hair, and sharing clothes and jewellery. It is difficult to say exactly what her stepdaughter may have been thinking; she is such a dim and frivolous girl.

  True to form, Randolph had given her no hint of Mr. Dunne’s arrival. Five mornings ago, Ada had looked out the window and seen a man seated on her porch, a brooding figure dressed all in black. Startled, she had rushed into the kitchen and excitedly reported the trespasser to her husband. With his mouth full of toast Randolph had replied, “Yes, my dear, that is Mr. Dunne. That damn Gobbler Johnson has resurfaced – sent me a threatening letter. Until I get the matter sorted out, I thought it prudent to keep a man watching over the place.” Offering a placating smile, he continued to assure her that this was just a precaution, there was absolutely no need for alarm.

  But Ada is alarmed, most dreadfully alarmed. After Gobbler Johnson had fired into her husband’s office, she had done her best to drag out of Randolph what was behind this mad act. With customary vagueness, Randolph had drawn a caricature of an ignorant prospector who, having lost an unwinnable case, had gotten it into his head that his legal counsel was at fault. In an act of bravado, the lout had fired a bullet into the wall above his lawyer’s head. Randolph had sworn there had been no genuine intention to harm him – Johnson had meant only to frighten him. And then he had conceded with a sorry-looking smile, “In that he was successful. His mission accomplished, he won�
��t be heard from again.” But Johnson has been heard from again and as a consequence, that very peculiar man, Mr. Dunne, is guarding her doorstep, armed to the teeth.

  What she finds even more disturbing is Randolph’s attempt to arm her, to press a five-shot derringer pepperbox on her. When he informed her that Mr. Dunne was going to teach her how to use the weapon, she had retorted that she was not going to submit to any such nonsense, he could get that idea out of his head. Her husband had turned the pocket gun over to Mr. Dunne and put the onus on his hireling to get her to accept instruction.

  Yesterday, Mr. Dunne had come to the door and solemnly declared it was time for her lesson. She had done her best to hold firm against him, but he was more stubborn than she had bargained for. He had simply persevered, saying the same thing over and over again with the single-mindedness of a child who wants something and will not relent until he has it. At last, it came to her that she could drive him off only by losing her temper or insulting him. But she could not bring herself to show him such rudeness.

  With ill grace she followed him out of the house to buy some peace at the price of a lesson and be rid of him. Pedantically, Dunne had explained the working of the gun to her, shown her how to cock it. Standing beside her, solicitously supporting her arm, he directed her aim towards the lone cottonwood tree in the backyard. His touch was very light and delicate, as if he thought the slightest pressure would snap a fragile bone. Then, his breath gusting against her cheek, he whispered, “Now, Mrs. Tarr, fire away.” She did, two rounds, the second of which found its mark and bit off a small plaque of bark from the tree.

  “Keep firing,” he said. “Once he’s struck you must not hesitate. You must finish the job.”

  But the feel of the pistol jumping and struggling in her hand like a tiny animal squeezed in her fist had been so upsetting that she had dropped the gun at her feet and walked back into the house feeling vaguely ashamed and disgusted with herself. A few moments later she heard a timid knock and went to the door.