“He did, until it burned down at the first of the year. Complete loss. He and Hilda moved into town and rented the biggest room in the boardinghouse, and have been there ever since.”
“Gray-haired man with a white-haired wife? Older folk?”
“That’s them.”
“I have met them, then. The names just didn’t stay with me. He’s a quiet man, very little to say at the table.”
Myrtle nodded and straightened some thimbles on a little shelf nearby. “That’s Claude. Silent as a church mouse, except when he has his fiddle in hand.”
“I haven’t heard him play at the boardinghouse.”
“He generally does his practicing in an old shed about an eighth of a mile out that way.” She pointed toward the rear of the shop. “He’s shy about his fiddling until he’s practiced up.”
“Why is he practicing now, I wonder?”
“You haven’t heard, I guess. We’ve got a big dance coming up, going to be held at the big horse barn over on the south end of town. Outside if the weather is good, inside if it rains. Claude provides the music. The town’s held dances every few months since the end of the war. There’ll be a couple of pigs roasted in the ground and lots of steaks fried. The idea is to give people a chance to know each other better and put aside differences.”
“Does it work?”
“There was a knife fight at the last two dances. Same men both times, and they were drunk both times, too.”
“Oh my.”
“It can be a rowdy town sometimes. It’s Texas, after all.”
Julia smiled. “A dance. It sounds like it could be a pleasant diversion . . . if knife fights can be avoided.”
“It will happen a week from this Friday night. I’m quite sure you’ll receive plenty of invitations, being as pretty as you are. I’m surprised Johnny Cross hasn’t asked you already. If he wastes too much time, he might lose his dancing partner to somebody else.”
Julia gave an impish grin and shrugged. “Maybe so. Maybe Sam Heller.”
“Oh! Have you met him now?”
“Well, no. But I dropped a subtle word or two with a couple of busybodies who hang around the boardinghouse, looking for gossip. Just to let him get the word that I’ve heard of him and have an interest in meeting him.”
“Oh! Very forward of you, my dear.”
“My father always taught me to say what it is you want, and not to be shy about it.”
“You might want to be aware that Sam Heller and Johnny Cross have an . . . unusual kind of relationship. Mutual respect and antagonism all rolled up together until it’s hard to peel the two apart.”
“Well, neither man has asked me yet. Who knows? Someone else might ask me before either one of them gets around to it.”
“Yes, indeedy, Julia. And speaking of that, there comes a likely prospect for asking you right now.”
Julia looked out the window and felt her heart sink as she saw, just entering the angle of view allowed by the window, Timothy Holt, walking toward the shop with another paper flower in his hand.
“It is very nice of you to ask me, Timothy,” said Julia as she walked with the humble young man in what he told her was the direction of his home. “I don’t know I’ve ever been invited to a dance by a better young man.”
“So, you’ll go with me?” Timothy asked, his smile bright and his step quickening.
“Timothy, it wouldn’t be right of me to say yes,” she said. “It would give you, I mean, give people, the wrong impression of our friendship.”
“But you are my friend, right, Miss Julia?”
“Of course I’m your friend. But that is all I can be, Timothy. Just your friend.”
“Well . . . can you go with me to the town dance?”
“No, Timothy. I can thank you for asking me, but I can’t go with you.”
Timothy’s shoulders slumped and he looked down. Conversation ended for a few moments.
“Are we still going the right direction to your house?” Julia asked.
“Yes.”
“May I meet your mother when we get there?”
“Yes. If you want to.”
“I’d like to tell her how much I admire her son.”
Timothy had nothing to say. In moments he turned down an alley and Julia followed.
The house would have been easy to pass by with barely a notice. Made in a simple rectangular pattern, no more than a shed, really, it was made of the same unpainted wood as a nearby small barn. From the outside the place looked barely large enough to accommodate two occupants.
Timothy’s widowed mother was named Margaret, and a more slumped, exhausted-looking woman Julia had never seen. It was clear within moments of beginning to speak with her that Margaret Holt was nearly blind and also hard of hearing. Clearly she was not equipped to pursue a livelihood. The importance of Timothy’s meager earnings made with his broom, and the charity foods sent home with him from local cafés, as Myrtle had told her about, became clear in a rush.
The only chair Margaret had to offer was a crude bench sitting against a bare and windowless side wall, near the cot that apparently served Timothy as a bed. Margaret’s bed was as crudely made as a cot, but was bigger and was an authentic bed, complete with a straw-stuffed bedtick. It was the nicest item in the entire tiny house.
Julia did her best to converse with Margaret, but the woman possessed a slurring impediment of speech and Julia understood only some of what she said. What came through was Margaret’s appreciation for Julia’s having been kind to her son, who had spoken of Julia to Margaret with great affection.
Julia was about to thank Margaret for passing on the laudatory words when Margaret suddenly shifted her manner and told Julia, in effect, to draw no closer to her son. Her theme became one Julia had heard before, from Johnny Cross: Timothy was prone to develop fast and easy infatuations, and just like most men, the more attractive the object of the infatuation, the stronger it grew. In Timothy’s case infatuations were extraordinarily intense, and when they collapsed, Timothy went through times of equally intense emotional devastation. The widow spoke it all in much cruder, struggling terms, but the content of her message was clear.
“I understand,” Julia said, and was secretly glad to have stronger grounds for doing what she’d already known she must do: make Timothy understand that she could be his friend, but nothing more.
Timothy heard nothing of what his mother said to Julia, because he had left the two women alone so he could go to the back door of the Cattleman and pick up whatever leftover food the chef might have. He also sought privacy to grieve over the obvious fact that Julia did not care for him in the way he cared for her.
Timothy walked along through his usual back-alley route to the Cattleman, avoiding the street so that no one would see he was occasionally wiping tears from his eyes.
How could she not love him? She was the dearest, sweetest creature he’d ever known. And she’d been kind to him, treating him like he counted, like he meant something. How could he go on like he was, alone, after having met her?
Timothy had never felt more isolated from the world around him or more hopeless of ever finding a woman of his own. And even if he did, it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Oh! My God, watch where you’re going!”
Timothy was startled by the harsh voice and gaping face of the man he almost ran into while rounding a corner in the dark with a basket of leftover Cattleman’s food in his hand. He nearly dropped the basket. The man he’d nearly collided with stumbled off to one side and almost tripped over his own feet.
Timothy caught a strong whiff of whiskey on the man’s breath. It repelled him. Timothy’s late father had been a hard-drinking man, and as a small boy Timothy had earned some bruises and even scars because of his father’s habits. His mother had protected him as best she could, but often that wasn’t good enough. And when Timothy’s father hurt him, she always tried to smooth over the situation by saying, “He’s b
een drinking, Tim. That’s why he hit you. He’s been drinking, that’s all.”
It was only natural that Timothy had come to despise liquor and what it did to those who abused it.
The man, a small-built fellow, corrected his stumbling and steadied himself with a hand against the nearest wall. Then he studied Timothy through the thick lenses of his spectacles.
“I know who you are,” he said, tongue tangling and distorting his words. “You’re that feeble-minded fellow who sweeps at the big store. Timothy, I think.”
“I know you, too,” Timothy answered. “You’re that man who takes pictures of people.”
“Otto Perkins, and pleased to meet you.”
“Same, sir. But you’re drunk, Mr. Perkins.” Timothy surprised himself with his own boldness.
“I think maybe I am. I don’t drink much, but today the temptation struck and I visited the Dog Star. I planned to drink only a little, but there’s a photograph there that I made myself, a very unpleasant image of a dead man I and Mr. Sam Heller found on the road some days ago, and seeing that face looking at me off its easel was distressing enough that I drank more and more.”
“My papa drank a lot. It finally kilt him. That’s what my mama says it was. All I know is he went out to pee one day and dropped dead.”
“Very sorry. Sad for you, I’m sure. Why are you out roaming the alleyways just now, by the way? What’s that in your hands?”
“It’s food. The cook down at the Cattleman Hotel shares food with me and my mama.”
“I’m sure that’s a big help. You can’t make much money sweeping for a shopkeeper.”
“No. Who sweeps at your shop?”
“Any sweeping done there is done by me. Which usually means the place stays dirty.”
“I could sweep for you if you’d pay me some like Mr. Lockhart does.”
At another time, Perkins would have bypassed that offer without a thought. Being uncharacteristically drunk, though, he reacted with equally uncharacteristic magnanimity. “That’s a good idea, Timothy. I’d be glad for the help. Can you do it and still have time to sweep at the Emporium, though?”
Timothy foresaw no problem with seeing to the needs of both businesses, and within moments an evening’s chance alleyway meeting had turned into a new opportunity for a simple man who encountered few of those.
“Want to come meet my mama, Mr. Perkins? She’d like you for hiring me.”
“Will that food you got there be for sharing?”
“You . . . you can have my part of it, sir. Since you’re going to let me sweep for you.” Timothy gave the warmest grin he could. In the shadow-casting light from a nearby window, the grin gave Timothy a ghastly look, heightened by the puffiness of his eyes. He’d wept hard a little earlier, grieving over his rejection by Julia Canton.
“You all right, boy?” asked Perkins.
“Please, sir, don’t call me boy, if you would.”
“Sorry . . . Tim. Timothy. Are you all right, though?”
“Sir, I was . . . I was weeping some earlier.”
“You hurt? Sick?”
“Heartbroke.”
“Over what?”
“There’s a lady in town, name of Canton. I thought she was a friend of mine and liked me, but she wouldn’t say she’d go to the dance with me. There’s a dance in town before long and I really wanted to have her go with me to it.”
“Canton . . . I’ve seen her,” Perkins said. “She was in my shop once with . . . with somebody.” Perkins had been about to say the name of Johnny Cross, but despite his alcohol-dulled mind, saw prudence in not doing so. Considering that Timothy had just professed his infatuation for the woman, Timothy might get jealous and imagine he could somehow take on Johnny Cross. Timothy didn’t need trouble with an old pistol fighter who once rode with Quantrill and Anderson.
“She’s a mighty pretty woman, Timothy. Maybe the prettiest I’ve ever seen anywhere. Which means there’s going to be a lot of men trying to get with her . . . you might have better luck setting your sights a little lower. Don’t look sad . . . it’s the same with me. Like the saying goes: I could grease up a Chinaman and pin his ears back and swallow him whole quicker than I could turn the head of somebody like Miss Canton, so I just accept things as they are. I’m not going to spend my time trying to do what can’t be done.”
“But I like her, Mr. Perkins. Like her a whole lot. Whole lot.”
Otto Perkins smiled and put his arm around Timothy’s shoulder. They began to walk, going in the direction Timothy had been moving before. “My friend, the first day you come sweep my floors for me, there’s something I want to show you that may give you a different perspective of Miss Canton. You see, Tim, sometimes things ain’t what they appear. And people, too. Most of all people.”
Timothy had no idea what Perkins was talking about, but nodded because he’d learned that it made life easier, as a man of feeble mind, just to pretend and go along with what smarter folk said.
“She was at my house this afternoon,” said Timothy. “She met my mama. She might still be there, I reckon.”
Perkins halted. “Miss Canton?”
“Yes.”
“If she is still there, Timothy, I think we should not go in. I have reasons for that.”
Timothy, who was much less upset now than he had been earlier in the evening, found himself in agreement. They walked on toward the hidden-away shack home of the little Holt family, but the prospect of them actually entering the house seemed lessened now.
They turned a corner and came in view of the Holt shack, and noticed a man standing past it, smoking a cigar and apparently watching the little house. When he noticed Timothy and Perkins, he seemed to start a little, but a moment later took on a relaxed stance and drew deeply on his cigar. “Gentlemen,” he said in a burst of thick smoke.
“Hello, sir,” said Perkins.
Timothy strode up to the stranger. “Why you watching my house, mister?”
“Your house? Here?” The man nodded toward the shack.
“I remember you,” Timothy said. “You were out on the street when . . . when . . .”
“I was,” said the man. “I remember seeing you from across the street. I’m sorry you were treated that way. It wasn’t right.”
Timothy stared at the ground, silent.
Perkins asked, “Why this place, and this little house, on this night?”
“Just out for a walk and a smoke,” the man said. “Name’s Brody. Wilfred Brody.”
“Otto Perkins. And you’ve already met Timothy here.”
“Good to meet both of you. Good evening, gentlemen.” He puffed his cigar, touched the brim of his derby hat, and walked away.
“Nice enough gent, I suppose,” said Perkins. “But there’s something there that just feels a little . . . odd.”
Timothy said nothing. He went to the door of his humble dwelling and put his ear to it. After listening a few moments, he said, “I think Mama’s in there by herself now. Come on and let her meet you.”
Perkins was in his own mind ready to go on to his own room at the rear of his photography studio, but instead he joined Timothy and went inside. When the door closed them in, the man they had met appeared again out of the dark. He stared at the house, listening and waiting, then at last whispered to himself, “Well, seems she isn’t in there after all. I sure don’t know how she got out without me seeing her. But don’t you worry, pretty lady. I’ll find you and get you back where you belong. Don’t you doubt it.” He walked away again, this time not to return.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Her escape had been made by way of a back door, and once out of the rough little dwelling, Julia Canton had managed to move without letting the loitering stranger out in the shadows see her. She had no idea who the man was or why he seemed to be tracking and watching her. She was, however, a young woman whose life so far had involved, three times, the fighting off of unwanted and violent carnal advances. Though no one would guess it to look at her, s
he often carried more hidden derringers and shivs than a traveling gambler. She knew how to use them all, and a few times had done so.
After leaving the Holt shack, she was glad to have done so before the return of Timothy. She knew she’d hurt the young man’s feelings, rejecting his sweet-but-unwanted invitation to the upcoming town dance. It made her feel bad for him, but also made her not want to encounter him any more than necessary. She was glad, at least, that Timothy’s sad and invalid mother understood her son’s tendency to tie his heartstrings to women with whom there could be no hope of a relationship. If Mrs. Holt had resented Julia for hurting her son’s feelings, Julia would have been greatly saddened.
She made her way through town, keeping an eye out for the man she had detected was following her. She did not see him.
Nearing her boardinghouse, Julia heard the faint strains of Claude Farley’s fiddle, scratching out an off-key rendition of “Soldier’s Joy.” Julia paused, frowning to herself as she imagined going back to her lonely room, suffering through an evening of boredom while listening to an old man practice his fiddling.
An intolerable prospect. Julia couldn’t face the thought of a lonely evening. At the very least she had to be among people, and not the dull residents of a boardinghouse whose idea of excitement was adding honey to their cups of coffee for sweetener. How bold! Julia rolled her eyes heavenward and for a few moments hated the town of Hangtree.
There were, of course, the saloons. She would have a better chance of finding diversion there, but there would also be the inevitable approach of drunken men who imagined they could gain her company and favor with their pathetic attempts at being suave and appealing.
There was only one man in this town who could appeal to her, and she had yet even to meet him. Seen him, yes, met him, no. When that inevitable meeting came, it would be important that she make sure it happened in just the right way, so that it could lead to the right result. That was the very reason she was in this backwater place at all.
She bypassed the boardinghouse and kept walking. Though there was risk in being seen in a saloon—she’d been trying to cultivate the image of a moral, churchgoing young woman, after all—she couldn’t resist taking a few moments to be herself. Her life had involved so many pretenses at so many times that sometimes she was left drained and exhausted.
Savage Texas: The Stampeders Page 8
