Diamonds in the Rough

by Emmy Waterford

  “I hope so,” was all Flannery had to say.

  Hannah couldn’t help notice that the men in the saloon were growing greater in number and bolder in their attention to her. From various places in the room, tables in the corner, stools at the bar, she tried not to notice how their eyes found her, combing her up and down. She wasn’t even thirteen years old, but the years had given her strong legs and good posture, and nature had begun to make good on the promise of her childhood. Her face must have been pleasant enough, the way they smiled at her, and she was mature enough to know that her blossoming bosom was as exciting to them, even more so, than that of a woman their own age.

  It sickened Hannah to know what they were thinking, what cruel imaginings they might be fostering about her. She knew that thirteen years old back home, or in a place like New York or even north in Chicago, was different from thirteen in the flatlands, in the foothills, or in the crags of the swamps. People cared less about appearances, about civility, about certain social standards. Hannah knew that even in the big cities, those things were often of little or no value, but in the wilds, unincorporated territories, thirteen was marrying age.

  Marrying, Hannah repeated to herself. Now that she was old enough to become interested in the idea as a serious part of her life, the meaning of it confounded and even disgusted her. Marriage? A marriage is the kind of love that Mom and Dad shared, mutual respect, somebody you like and want to be with, somebody you would live for and die for. These monsters don’t want that, not from me or from anybody. They want a slave, a factory for their children, a vessel for their amusement and their release. They stink and they’re vile and I can’t stand a single one of them!

  But that didn’t stop them from looking, it even seemed to encourage them. And the more Hannah neglected their attention, the more they seemed to feel compelled to share it. They started making little sounds as she walked past, kisses and sucking sounds, one even making the little squeals of a suckling pig.

  But a stern glare from Michael or Flannery or even both would be enough to shut them up. Nobody in Cutthroat would stand up to Flannery. As far as they or Hannah or most other people were concerned, he was Cutthroat.

  “Any news from the magistrate?” Flannery shook his head, slow and grim. Michael rapped his flattened palm against the bar. “Damnit! I chopped those trees down, my family worked that stream, how can they say it’s not ours by right?”

  “Ain’t them that talk at all,” Flannery said, “but the boys in New York. If there’s any real money in that land, they got rich friends who want it, and they’ll pay ahead of time to get it.”

  Michael chewed on it, bitter as the truth sank in. “Greedy, corrupt … where are they while we’re out here forging the country, eh?”

  “Back in their beds, safe and sound.”

  “You got that right.”

  “I gotta bed.” The voice squirmed up from the end of the bar. Michael and Flannery and Hannah turned to see the grinning, grimy face, greasy brown hair hanging over his quickly aging face. “I gotta bed and two chickens. That little filly can share ‘em all, if’n she wants.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Michael said.

  But the man only stepped away from the bar and slinked toward them. “Suppose you make me?”

  But Michael didn’t even bother to answer, at least not in words. He’d been as aware of their attention to Hannah as she’d been, and he knew they were sizing him up too, judging his ability to protect her and himself.

  But that was a moment of release for Michael Alexander, the crashing down of three years of guilt and misery, loneliness and self-hatred. Hannah’s father hadn’t been able to protect his wife, but he wasn’t about to fail his daughter.

  This he did with blinding speed, before anybody could fully take it in, much less respond or interrupt.

  Michael’s hands jutted out, grabbing the man’s ratty, rotting collar and pulling him away from Hannah, away from the bar, spinning him and rushing him backward and straight into the twelve-point antlers mounted on the wall. With a hideous, wet crunch, Michael rammed the man in and the antlers pushed through, poking out of his chest and collar bone. He grunted, coughing up blood and shaking as Michael stepped back. The man remained on the wall for a moment before collapsing to the floor, pulling the mounted antlers down with him.

  The room went dead quiet as all eyes turned to the man on the ground, foot twitching, and to Michael as he glared at them, panting, eyes burning with his fury. He caught the eye of one man, then the other as he turned slowly, letting them take him in, letting them know what they’d be facing the next time they were feeling bold and wicked.

  He took Hannah’s hand and led her out of the saloon, silence remaining until they stepped out and into the main thoroughfare. Conversations resumed thereafter, but Hannah didn’t know anything of what they were saying, and she was grateful for the fact.

  *

  The year passed without much incident, the stream’s supply of gold flake drying up even as Hannah and Michael kept busy with other tasks. The vegetable garden was pushing up good beets and carrots, and they’d managed to raise a few healthy chickens that kept them in eggs and even gave them enough to sell to Flannery to serve to his guests.

  Life was difficult but relatively peaceful, white clouds harmless in the sweet humidity of summer. Michael kept catching her father glancing at her with a smile as she tended to the garden, brought the laundry in from the creek over the ridge.

  “What, Daddy?”

  “Nothing, it’s just … you’re growing up, and, well, I … I just think your mother would be so very proud, that’s all. I wish she could be here to see what a good job she did raising you.”

  Hannah smiled, leaning to his side. “She’d only be saying the same thing about you, and you’d both be right. But I wish she was here, too.” They walked toward the property in silence, Hannah’s thoughts drifting to the news of the day, coming closer and closer. “I hope the new pastor likes the salad we bring him, and that there’s enough for the whole congregation.”

  Michael huffed, amused. “Hard to say how many of Cutthroat’s upper crust are likely to come out on a Sunday morning, much less for church services. Tell you the truth, I’m not sure you should get your hopes up on them staying, this pastor and his family. I know you’re excited about it, but —”

  “We need a church here, Daddy.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “It’ll only be good for the community —”

  “Of course it will. The question, my daughter, is whether the community will be good for the church. You know these types, they’re not exactly Sunday-go-to-meetin’s.”

  “That’s just why it’s so important that the pastor stay, that the church grows.”

  Michael gave her a little kiss. “From your mouth to God’s ears, Hannah.”

  *

  “Original Sin remains the abomination of modern man,” Rev. Orville Bean said, his bald head shining in the summer sun, a drop of sweat crawling down his shaved temple. “We think we can outrun the sin of our birth, even as we try to outrun the sins of our lives in the East. So many dreamers pouring across these plains, but in search of what?”

  Hannah sat with her father, Flannery, and only one or two other members of the camp’s hardscrabble community. These were two elderly women, once prostitutes by Hannah’s guess, now scullery maids at Flannery’s hotel and there no doubt at his insistence. The rest walked past the group, collected in front of the pastor’s carriage not far from Flannery’s hotel and saloon, which was closed during services.

  But that only left the growing population to scuttle past the sermon, heads low, hands in their pockets, to go about their business and wait in privacy for the saloon to open its doors.

  Reverend Bean paced in his spot, taking two steps to the left, then three to the right, then three back, a tiger in a tiny, invisible cage. “The hills are crawling with murderers! Whites killing whites, savages killing savages, whites and savages killin
g each other! It’s a Godless country, and we are a Godless and forsaken people!”

  Hannah couldn’t help but lean a little closer to her father and savor the feeling of his sheltering arm around her, warmth and love against the blast of cold hatred that seemed to be coming from this new and provocative pastor.

  “This is a soulless century, with only worse to come! This place grows, the people here survive, even prosper. Yet how many will sit and hear the Lord’s word?”

  “Let’s hear it then,” one man said, grimy and feral and smelling of urine. “Alls I can hear is a lot of your words, and I don’t cotton to ‘em, neither.”

  The pastor’s wife, quiet and plump and wrapped in a shawl and black dress, turned with the rest of the small crowd to grimace at the interloper.

  “You want the word of the Lord?” Reverend Bean didn’t even bother to open the bible clutched in his bony fingers, holding the book to his heart while he pointed out the man with his blameful finger. “Romans, 1:18: ‘For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness…’” He continued quoting scripture from memory.

  The reverend’s wife, Hannah, Michael, Flannery and the old women all glared at the young man, who stood squirming under their attention. He finally just waved them off and turned to shuffle off down the muddy thoroughfare.

  Hannah looked at her father, the two of them returning to the sermon just as Reverend Bean did the same. “You see the likes of which God has put before us? You see how great the task He has set for us? To live among this rabble, and to raise them up to be able to feel His love and see His light. Let us pray to the Lord for the strength to meet this towering task!”

  And Hannah was eager to pray, and eager for the peace and especially the quiet that prayer would bring.

  *

  After the sermon, Hannah and Michael lingered to greet the new reverend and his wife properly, everyone sharing a salad, which Flannery served in bowls from the little restaurant of his hotel. The lettuce was crisp, the carrots flavorful, the tangy vinegar dressing from Flannery’s own recipe.

  The reverend’s wife, whom he introduced as Ethel, said not a single word during the entire period of fellowship after services, and even the reverend was much less talkative than Hannah would have expected, given his verbose and protracted sermon on the evils of, well, everything.

  Michael smiled and tried to make conversation, offering, “I wish you’d been there when we lost my wife … to give her a proper service, that is. At the time, I … I was grief-struck, I have to admit.”

  Reverend Bean’s eyes rolled up and down in their big sockets, bony cheeks pushing out from behind his waxy skin. “Not all can hear the Lord’s word, or carry it upon their tongues.”

  Hannah dared not say what she was thinking, that the reverend’s own tongue seemed a bit split for her own sake, befitting his reptilian appearance, a snake in the grass, a reptile in a pastor’s black jacket.

  Reverend Bean turned his sights on Hannah, and not for the first time in the conversation. “The girl is respectfully silent,” he said, addressing Michael but looking at Hannah. “A servant of the Lord, I trust?”

  “Very much so,” Michael said on Hannah’s behalf. She was more than ready to say nothing or even less. “And a green thumb, too.”

  The reverend glanced at the salad on his fork. “Indeed. ‘But he answered and said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”’”

  “Mathew, 4:4,” Mrs. Bean said, earning an angry and silencing glare from her husband. She looked at her bowl of salad and didn’t look up again, that Hannah could see.

  *

  It was a two-hour walk back to the Alexanders’ claim and property, just north up the slope from the Cutthroat camp. Hannah carried the empty wooden bowl, Michael keeping a careful eye around them.

  Michael said, “That was quite a sermon, eh? Was it everything you expected?”

  “And more,” Hannah said, “a lot more. He seems so angry, for a man of God, I mean.”

  Michael chuckled and nodded. “I suppose he might have good reason.”

  “So do you, Daddy, and so do I. But we don’t exactly go about huffing and shouting at everybody. Granted, you sometimes do what you have to do. I know it’s a … a Godless place we’re in, he might be right about that.”

  “No, Hannah, no, that’s the one thing he’s wrong about. God is everywhere, you know that. Just like your mother said.”

  Hannah puzzled over it for a moment. “Did she?”

  Michael stopped walking and turned to look Hannah straight in the eyes. “Don’t you remember? Wherever we are, as long as we’re together —”

  “We’re home.”

  “That’s right, Hannah.” Michael looked at the sky, the glorious blue sheet of tranquil heaven above them. “It’s a mighty big home and a mighty big we.”

  Hannah smiled, forever impressed by her father’s calm wisdom, his ability to overcome tragedy and rebound with a smile and an open heart, ready to face the next challenge whatever that may be, near or far.

  But a quick sniff of the air told Hannah that the next challenge was much nearer than farther. She looked up and to the east, toward their property, the smell of smoke cutting through her other senses and straight to her brain.

  “Daddy, I … I think there’s something burning!”

  Michael sniffed, his expression turning instantly to one of panic, eyes wide and mouth small, posture suddenly crouched. “I think you’re right!” He grabbed her hand and they ran up the hill together, heat suddenly thickening even as Hannah’s blood ran cold.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hannah’s feet pedaled beneath her, mind awash in smoky visions of destruction and fleeting from one possibility to the next. Did I leave a fire burning? Were there embers from last night’s fire?

  Smoke got thicker in the air, burning Hannah’s eyes, ash filling her lungs as they ran faster and higher, her strong legs propelling her farther even as every other part of her body, heart and soul couldn’t bear to see what was surely waiting.

  As they ran farther up the wooded slope, it was clear that a fire was the culprit, and that the Alexander property was its victim. Black smoke poured out of the house, orange flames licking out of the windows, the heat pushing Hannah back.

  Hannah and Michael separated and looked around the tree-strewn front yard of their property, the chickens panicking in their coop, kitchenware strewn around.

  Michael pulled a pistol out of his belt and looked around, Hannah’s heart pounding as the first man raced out from behind one of the many poplar and alders around their house. He swung a shovel and knocked the gun out of Michael’s hand.

  Hannah ran for the gun, but was quickly overcome by someone from behind, mean hands grasping around her arms and pulling her back. Hannah looked back and up to see a man she didn’t recognize, bigger than she by a few inches, his breath stinking of rot, his body of toil and disease.

  “Just sit tight, little lady,” he rasped into her ear. Hannah saw her father dodging another swipe of the shovel just as a third man came at him from behind.

  “Daddy!”

  Michael turned, instinctively reading her warning. But he was too late again, the third man rushing him low, grabbing his legs while his partner tackled his upper body. Michael Alexander went down without a chance.

  Hannah tried to wrench herself away from her captor’s grip, but he held her tight and pulled her close, his belly pressing against her back. “Watch close, honey, look how the mountain doles out her justice!”

  The other two were on their feet again, Michael reaching up between them.

  Thwack! One threw a hard kick into Michael’s ribs and then a second. Michael tried to crawl onto his hands and knees to push himself up, but another kick by the other guy sent him back to the ground.

  Thump, crack, thwack! Several more kicks and Michael was a squirming heap between them, one feeble arm reaching up.

/>   “Stop it!” Hannah cried, her voice cracking. “You’re killing him! You’re killing my daddy!”

  One of them looked over, waving the man behind Hannah to push her forward and toward him. “S’only fair, girlie, after what he did to our brother Enoch, who came out here on his own to get rich, same as you! And this some bitch twelve-points him?”

  “No, you … you don’t understand,” Hannah said, sobs rubbing her voice raw.

  “We got witnesses,” the other said, turning to throw another two kicks into Michael’s head. His arm finally fell. “Said he killed Enoch flat out!”

  “He was going to … to hurt me,” Hannah said, all hope of saving her father’s life, or her own, winding down into a pitiful whine.

  “Not any more’n we’re gonna,” the one said behind Hannah said with a wicked smile. “Don’t gimme none o’ that cryin’ neither. It’s only fair, we lost a brother! Yer ours by rights!” He looked at the others, still throwing a few angry kicks at Michael’s body. “He dead?”

  “He’s a goner,” one of the two said. “Will be by the time the cougars get him anyway.”

  Hannah’s strength poured out of her all at once, no more fight left in her. Her father’s body lay lifeless in front of their burning home, the wreckage of his dream, the horrible face of his ultimate fate. Everything he’d worked for, lived for and loved, up in smoke. Hannah was struck as much by the tragedy to him as to herself, his loss as much as hers. But it was as if her body were an empty shell, even her own life force slipping away to leave nothing behind. Despite what her new masters undoubtedly anticipated, Hannah Alexander was, in many ways, already dead.

  “All right,” one of Michael’s murderers said as he stepped casually away from the burning house. “Let’s get her up the hill before sundown.”

  They dragged Hannah, her feet dragging as the brute behind her pulled at her arms, nearly wrenching them out of their sockets. “Dang,” he said, “this one’s a lot prettier’n I thought.”

  “‘Bout a year older n’ when they killed Enoch.”