by Toombs, Jane
Still, you left her, Danny thought. Left me and Burke as well. Nothing his father put a hand to ever came quite right. And yet, though mother had been a saint, Danny had always loved his father best.
They wedged their way to the bar, Danny jostling the arm of the man to his left. The man, big and burly with a bushy black beard, looked down hard at him.
“Are you serving babes not yet weaned from their mother’s milk?” he asked. The barman ignored him and set a bottle of whisky in front of Michael.
Danny sipped his drink. He had never learned to tolerate spirits. A drink, two at the most, and he fell asleep. His father, on the other hand, could drink for hours. In fact, he was already refilling his glass.
When the fiddler started Old Dan Tucker some of the men joined the chorus while others hunched silently over their drinks.
“We came by way of Panama,” Danny’s father was saying to two men on his far side. Danny envied his father’s ease with lies when he needed them, also his capacity for hard drink and his nonchalance with women. He did not envy him his temper. It’s what had gotten them into trouble in St. Louis. A man had been killed in a saloon brawl, and though Michael hadn’t killed him, he’d been part of the fight. With the reputation of a brawler pursuing him, he’d thought the time opportune to leave for California and start life anew. He wasn’t the only one--many were doing so, for various reasons.
Michael was spinning a good yarn. “The black natives poled us up the Chagras while all the time we were battling the mosquitoes. We stayed at a hotel, a tent it was, and we had to wait for our coffee to be ground and I looked from the window and saw a girl chewing the beans and spitting them into the pot. Then it was by mule train we traveled to Panama City where we weren’t allowed to shoot the vultures because the great birds cleaned the filth from the streets. When first we saw the sea I says, ‘Begorra, ‘tis the spitting image of the Atlantic.’ And all the while I’d been expecting a different breed of ocean.”
“You and the lad are just off the boat, I expect.”
“This morning and none too soon, after waiting two weeks offshore for a breeze to blow us here. And that after sitting a month and more in Panama before we shoved our way aboard the California. And would you believe it? We crossed the Isthmus from west to east.”
“You’re ass backwards,” the burly man next to Danny said.
“Pa, maybe you’ve said enough,” Danny cautioned Michael.
“You tell him, Duke,” another said to the burly man.
“As ass backwards as the day you were born,” Duke went on. “If you’re a-coming from the east coast to the west coast any jackass knows you travel east to west.”
“Sure now, and I’m begging to differ,” Michael said across Danny. “That steaming hell of a country is most peculiar, with more loops and bends than a shillelagh. So it was from west to east we went.”
“And I say you’re a liar.”
Michael placed his whisky glass on the bar. Danny nudged him, saying in a low voice, “Leave it alone now, pa. No trouble, please.”
Michael picked up his glass and saluted Duke. “I acknowledge the error of my thinking,” he said. “Sure and I must have been standing on my head when we made the crossing to believe we went one way when in truth we went the other.”
Duke grunted.
There was a murmur farther along the bar.
“One drink, no more,” the barman was telling an Indian. “Niggers and Indians, one drink, then vamoose.”
“Damn all these foreigners,” Duke said. Several of his friends muttered agreement. He rapped his empty bottle on the counter until the barman exchanged it for a full one. “They come here and make off with all the gold that rightfully belongs to us Americans.” A murmur of assent came from the men along the bar. “They come here with their fancy French sashaying and their strutting Spanish ways and try to take our women as well as our gold. It’s not right.”
“Seen the two women at the Parker House?” someone asked.
“I have. Two of the best-looking pieces I ever laid eyes on,” Duke said.
Danny began to protest, then subsided.
“That filly,” Duke went on, “I’d like to get my hand under her skirt for just two minutes. She’d soon lose her nose-in-the-air hoity-toity ways. I can tell a bawd when I set eyes on one.”
“She’s not a bawd,” Danny said quietly. “Neither of them are. They’re respectable ladies.”
“Respectable and in league with Rhynne?” Several of the men joined in Duke’s guffaw. “Rhynne, the premier whoremaster of San Francisco?”
Danny swung around to face Duke. “Take it back. Take back what you said about her.”
Duke smirked, put down his glass, and drew himself up to his full height. He was six inches taller than Danny. “And look who’s talking,” he said. “A little black Irish mick. And what do you know of women, sonny? I’ll wager you’ve never bedded a woman in your life. Not a woman of any sort, whore or otherwise.”
Danny felt the color rise to his neck and face.
Duke put his head back and laughed. “You see, mates, I was right. Nineteen-years-old and never been kissed.”
“I’m twenty-one,” Danny muttered.
“Twenty-one!” Duke unfastened a pouch from his belt and dropped it on the bar. “Duke Olmsted is standing a round,” he called out in a slurred voice. “To celebrate this here boy’s twenty-first birthday, since, by God, it must have been yesterday or today, he’s so green behind the ears.”
The men at the bar roared their appreciation; those at the tables around the room got up and crowded over. Danny gritted his teeth and hunched over his drink.
His father’s hand touched his wrist. “It’s not a man’s size,” Michael said gently, “nor the bombast in his voice that makes him a man. Nor is it the gratification of his lusts.”
Danny tried to grin at his father. But he found little value in Michael’s words. It was Duke’s words that rang in his head. How had the man known? He asked himself. How did they always guess? It was the shame of his life that he had never been with a woman, never kissed a girl with passion. Never.
“No,” the bartender was telling the Indian, “not you. You had your drink. Vamoose.”
Danny looked along the bar. The Indian’s lank hair hung to his shoulders, on his head was a battered black hat, his face was brown and lined, his oversized nose was squashed almost flat. The Indian said nothing—Danny had not heard him speak at all—but held his glass out over the bar to be filled.
“You’re drunk,” the bartender told him.
Taking his last two coins from his pocket, Danny tossed them on the bar. “I’m buying him a drink,” he said. The bartender looked from the coins to the Indian, all the while shaking his head.
Duke’s hand grasped Danny’s shoulder and spun him around. “He said no more drinks for the fucking Indian.”
Danny took his almost full glass from the bar and threw the whisky into Duke’s face.
Duke, surprised, released his hold and wiped his sleeve across his face. Danny stepped back. The crowd at the bar shrank from the two men, all except Michael and the Indian, who still held his glass extended over the bar.
“Get away,” Danny said to his father. “I’m for it, pa. There’s no need having all of them onto both of us.”
His father nodded just as Duke swung a wheeling ham-handed punch. Danny ducked but caught the blow on his shoulder. He was flung against the bar and staggered back into the Indian. His shoulder stung as though he’d been hit by a club.
The Indian threw his glass over his shoulder, pushed Danny aside and weaved toward Duke. He tripped on a fallen chair, lurched to one side and fell face first to the floor. A miner prodded him with his boot. “Dead drunk,” he said. Two men lifted the Indian from the floor and carried him out of the saloon.
Danny, forgotten, glanced at the open door. If he wanted to run, this was his chance. But he would not run. He would not run now if the whole world stood range
d against him.
The men returned from dragging the Indian into the street and clustered around the two men. Waiting. Expectant. Duke stared down at Danny.
“I don’t want to fight no baby,” he said.
He came toward Danny with his right hand extended. When he stopped a few feet away, Danny hawked up and spat in his open palm.
Duke stared in disbelief at the spittle, then roared and charged head down. Danny danced aside just in time, chopping at the back of Duke’s neck with his fist, so that his bull-like charge ended in the arms of two of the spectators. While Danny clenched and unclenched his stinging hand, Duke turned, assumed the classic pugilist’s stance and plodded towards him. Danny studied the burly man. Big, too big for him to lick. Yet Duke’s belly lapped over his belt. And the man was unsteady from the drink.
As Duke brought his right arm back for another roundhouse clout, Danny jabbed his fist into his stomach and leaped away. Duke’s mouth opened and closed but he made no sound. His arm still cocked, he stalked Danny around the circle of men. Once again, Danny jabbed his fist into his stomach, then, as Duke came on, darted away.
He might have continued his jabbing tactics had not his back struck the bar as he danced backwards. Go right or left? Duke swung before he could move either way. The blow caught Danny above the ear and seemed to explode in his head. The floor whirled up at him. His head thudded on a spittoon.
Dazed, Danny looked up to see Duke coining at him with a chair raised high. He scrambled back and away, beneath a table, and the chair splintered on its top. He grasped a table leg, pulled himself to the far side and came to his feet with the table between them.
Duke roared and hurled himself full-length across the table, his hands grasping for Danny’s throat. Danny flung himself backwards. Duke rolled awkwardly from the table, regained his feet and came on, bear-like. Danny, sweat burning his eyes and his ears still ringing from the head blow, jabbed at the big man’s stomach, once, twice, three times. Duke grunted with each blow, yet came on.
Danny jabbed again. Anticipating the blow this time, Duke caught his wrist and yanked him forward, twisting his arm. Danny howled in pain. Duke flung him to the floor, cocked a boot aimed at his head. Desperately, Danny squirmed away, then kicked upward with both feet.
His lunging thrust caught Duke in the groin. The big man’s foot shot forward, missed. Hands clutching his groin, he sank to his knees, a position from which he stared glassily, unable to move for the pain and nausea overcoming him.
“Enough is enough,” the bartender said. He came around the bar carrying a black truncheon. “Take him away,” he said to Duke’s friends, “He’s fouling my floor.” As two men did this, the bartender turned more quietly to Danny. “It’s best you be on your way.” Then he told Michael, “If you were to ask my advice, I’d say take the lad and be gone from this town for the next month or two.”
Michael nodded.
Danny and his father strode out to the muddy street. Around them the night was dark and chill, the fog high overhead. They paused in front of the saloon, savoring the clean night air while they got their bearings.
“This way,” Michael said, pointing to the greater darkness of the hills behind the town. They set off arm in arm.
“The best brawl I’ve seen in all my days,” Michael finally admitted, “that is, of those I’ve not been in on meself. You did yourself proud.”
Now’s the time, Danny thought. Now’s the time to ask him why he left me and Burke when we were kids, not to come back for so many years. I didn’t have the heart in St. Louis what with him in trouble and all. But now—now I’ve the right to ask. Before the words could form on his tongue his father sighed, then cleared his throat and began to sing, his voice slow and sad, clear and full:
“The summer’s gone and all the roses falling It’s you, it’s you must go and I must bide.”
The only warning was a footstep behind them. Danny began to turn when a blow caught him on the back of the head and he pitched forward to his knees. He heard scuffling, oaths, started to rise and was struck down again. Before his senses clouded completely he heard his father’s bellow:
“Ye sons o’ bitches ...”
Then no more.
When Danny opened his eyes the night was quiet with the fog all around him. He pushed himself to his feet, and shook his head to clear it. wincing with the pain. As he stood unsteadily, he heard singing from afar.
He groped this way and that in the fog.
“Pa,” he called. “Pa, where are you?”
He stumbled over something and knelt. His fingers found his father’s cold damp face. Even before Danny staggered back to the saloon and returned with a lamp, he knew his father was dead.
CHAPTER SIX
Kingman Sutton, bored by the drone of Wilkes Yancey’s voice, fingered the fire opal he wore on his right hand. He glanced from Dr. Robinson’s impassive face to the crackling log fire to the mirror above the mantel. Reflected in the mirror was Mary Yancey. Almost like a portrait, King mused. It was as if Wilkes had hung a portrait of his young wife where the gilt-edged mirror had always been.
Mary, regally tall and imperially aloof, her black hair in a chignon, her fitted bodice emphasizing her breasts, her mauve skirt sweeping the floor, looked every inch a Southern lady. In reality she was an Ohioan, Georgian only by way of her marriage to Wilkes the year before.
Mary’s hand moved and King realized he had been fancifying. Mary stood just outside the door to Wilkes’ study. In the mirror, her hand came up across her breasts to her throat. She watched King, unaware that he in turn was watching her.
Mary’s lips parted slightly. As they had parted the day before when, under the great live oak at the common corner of the Yancey and Sutton plantations, he had kissed her.
While Wilkes droned on, King recalled the tryst and what it had meant to him.
Her lips had responded before she drew back, bringing her hands up between them to hold him away. “King Sutton,” she said, “you’re taking advantage of a woman alone in a strange land.”
He’d pulled her to him, ignoring her fluttering hands, his lips nipping at her neck, her ear, her lips. She relaxed, her body soft against his, her lips yielding to his kisses. Then she twisted free.
He advanced on her. “I’ve had enough of your teasing ways,” he said.
“And you, Senator Sutton, with a sick wife at home.”
He whirled and walked to his horse, unlooped the reins from a branch and swung into the saddle. She ran after him.
“Oh, King, King,” she cried, holding to his booted leg. “I spoke without thinking. I know what it must be like for you. The horror you must suffer day after day.” She pressed her cheek against his leg.
Still angry, he stared down at her lustrous black hair. Though outraged by her reference to Betsy, at the same time he seemed to stand outside himself observing the two of them beneath the oak, this beautiful girl clinging to the dashing older man with the flowing grey-streaked hair. And, as he watched, he’d planned the next move of his campaign.
It was time for one of “Sutton’s Fancies.” That’s what they called them at the Georgia state capitol at Milledgeville. Not lies, certainly not lies, not even prevarications. No, “fancies.” They were part and parcel of politics and, especially when they worked, were admired and quoted repeatedly by all.
“You’ll only have a fortnight more to tempt and then deny me,” he told her. Mary Yancey raised her green-gold eyes. How had a bore like Wilkes captured this prize on his visit to his Cincinnati kin? King could have understood her marrying any of the other four Yancey brothers, for they possessed a certain mad charm. But Wilkes? Wilkes was the runt of the litter.
“Only a fortnight? Why do you say that, King?”
“I’ve booked my passage on the Eastern Star. We sail from Charleston on the twenty-ninth, bound for California.”
“California?” Her tone made the Territory seem as distant as Timbuktu. Considering the long voyage
around South America, he thought, it was in fact much farther.
“I intend to seek gold to replenish the Sutton fortunes,” he went on. That had a certain flair, he told himself. He’d discovered Mary liked the dramatic exaggeration, the romantic gesture.
“Oh, King, who will I have to talk to if you leave? The women scorn me for being a Yankee and the men, except for you, treat me as though I’d been carved from stone and mounted on a pedestal.”
“The women envy you; the men are afraid of you.”
“With you in California, I’ll have no one.”
“Have you forgotten Wilkes?”
“Oh Wilkes. He’s gone so often with his politicking to Charleston and Savannah and Milledgeville. And when he’s home he’s either balancing the accounts or writing his poetry.”
The poetry, he’d forgotten that. Perhaps Wilkes had won her with a song. “A man for all seasons,” he said.
From Mary’s hints—and King, twice her age, needed only a few—he thought he could imagine Wilkes’ lovemaking. King smiled. He’d often compared the preliminaries in bedding a woman to a duel, with the man and woman facing one another as antagonists. If lovemaking were a duel, he could picture Wilkes standing with his pistol pointed skyward. Long before the signal to fire was given, Wilkes’ pistol would have discharged with a mighty pop.
“Why are you smiling?” Mary asked.
“Thinking of all the gold I’ll find in California. Mountains of gold are waiting, they say, and rivers of gold where all you have to do is pick the nuggets from the water.”
“California is so far from Athens.”
“True, and the voyage around the Cape is fraught with danger. Danger from storms, from disease. Still we may put into port in Brazil or Chile where the senoritas are said to be lovely creatures.”
“Don’t tease me, King. You might never come back.”
“I’ll be gone two years at least.”
“Two years! That’s half a lifetime.”
“You’ll have forgotten me by then.”
“Oh, King, you know I’ll never forget you. Never.”
