Warlock

by Oakley Hall

  Brunk put his hand to his cheek. He turned slowly away. He moved toward the foot of the stairs, where he leaned against the newel post, a thick, dejected figure in the darkness of the entryway.

  Jessie was sitting up very straight, her mouth tightly pursed in her stiff face, her eyes glancing sideways at the checkerboard as though she were considering her next move. Her hand plucked nervously at the locket at her throat.

  There was a scuffling sound outside on the stoop, a low cursing. More drunken miners, the doctor thought; he was tired of drunken miners beyond patience. He stepped out toward them just as they came in through the door—two men who were not miners. Clay Blaisedell had come back to the General Peach.

  Morgan edged his way inside with an arm around Blaisedell, who was hatless, sagging, stumbling—not wounded in brave battle, merely drunk to helplessness. Brunk had turned and was watching them.

  “Come on, Clay boy,” Morgan was saying. “Sort those feet out. Almost home now—where you were bound to go.” He was panting, his white planter’s hat pushed back on his head. “Evening, Doc,” he said. Then Morgan said, “Evening, Miss Marlow,” and the doctor felt Jessie’s fingers grip his arm.

  Blaisedell pulled away from Morgan and stood swaying, his boots set apart and his great, fair head hanging as he faced Jessie. Jessie moved a step forward to confront her drunken hero. He had thought she would be shocked and disgusted but she was smiling and looked, he thought, with a painful wrench at his heart, triumphant.

  But she did not speak, and after a moment Blaisedell started for the stairs, holding himself very straight. He stopped at the foot, as though realizing his incapacity to mount them, and leaned upon the newel post as Brunk backed away.

  Morgan said to Brunk, “You look like you have a strong back, Jack. How about a hand upstairs?”

  “Let him lay in the gutter for all of me!” Brunk said. “One that would shoot down a sixteen-year-old boy in—”

  “Don’t say that, bullprod!” Morgan said; his voice was like metal scratching metal. Blaisedell clumsily tried to turn, and Morgan caught his arm as he staggered.

  “Help you either!” Brunk said. “That would kick a broken-arm fellow’s teeth in!” His voice rose hysterically. “High-rollers and road agents and murdering pimps and worse! Well, I am not afraid to talk out, and there’s things—”

  “Stop it!” Morgan snapped, just as the doctor heard Jessie utter the same words, her fingers tightening on his arm again. Brunk stopped and looked from Morgan to Jessie with his tortured red face.

  “I have been looking for coyotes howling that tune,” Morgan said, in the metallic voice. His eyes, glinting in the light from Jessie’s room, looked as cold as murder.

  “You will have a lot of teeth to kick in then!” Brunk cried.

  “I’ll know where to start!”

  “Never mind it, Morg,” Blaisedell said. He started up the stairs, and Morgan grasped his arm again and helped him upward, grunting with the effort and glancing back over his shoulder once at Brunk. The two men disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell, laboring and bumping against the railing.

  “Frank,” Jessie said. Slowly Brunk turned, his scar of a mouth strained wide, his fists clenched at his sides. “You are to get out of my house.”

  “Miss Jessie, can’t you see—”

  “Get out of my house!” Jessie said. Her fingers left the doctor’s arm; he heard her go back into her room. Brunk stood gazing after her with dumb pain on his face.

  “You had better leave, Frank,” the doctor said, with difficulty. He knew now that he was not the only man who had been jealous of Clay Blaisedell. He followed Jessie into her room, and heard, behind him, Brunk’s slow departing footsteps; above him, shuffling ones.

  Jessie was staring up at the ceiling with round eyes. “Are they saying things like that about him?” she whispered.

  “I suppose there are a few that—”

  “Frank said it,” she broke in. “Oh, the fools! Oh—” She put her hands to her face. “Oh, they are!” she whispered through her hands. “It is Morgan’s fault! It is because of Morgan! Isn’t it, David?”

  “I suppose in a way it is,” he said, nodding. He could not say more, and he was sorry now for Brunk, who had tried to.

  “It is!” Jessie said, and he heard Morgan coming back down the stairs.

  Morgan stopped and looked in the doorway, taking off his hat. His figure was slim and youthful, and his face, too, seemed young, except for his prematurely gray hair, which looked like polished pewter in the light. Slanting hoods of flesh at the corners of his eyes gave his face a half-humorous, half-contemptuous expression.

  “I am sorry to bring him home in a state like this, Miss Marlow,” he said, with a mock humility. “But he would come. And sorry for the fuss with the jack.”

  The doctor said, “You will have to excuse Brunk, Morgan. Stacey is a friend of his.”

  “Stacey?” Morgan said, with a lift of his eyebrows.

  “Whose teeth you kicked in, at your place. That was a cruel thing.”

  “Was it?” Morgan said, politely.

  “Mr. Morgan,” Jessie said in a stiff voice. “Possibly you could tell me what’s the matter with him. I mean, what has happened to him since he came back to Warlock.”

  “What’s happened to him is for the best,” Morgan said. “Though I don’t expect you will agree with me.”

  “What do you mean?” Jessie said.

  Morgan smiled thinly, and said, with the polite and infuriating contempt, “Well, Miss Marlow, he is a man with some good in him. I don’t much like to see him broken down under things. He is better off out of marshaling.”

  “Dealing faro in a saloon!” Jessie cried. The doctor was shocked at the venom in her voice, but Morgan only grinned again.

  “Or anything. But that’s handy and pays well. Good night, Miss Marlow. Good night, Doc.”

  “Just a moment, please!” Jessie said. “You didn’t want him to come back here, did you, Mr. Morgan?”

  “It is hard to argue with him sometimes.”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  Morgan put his tongue in his cheek and cocked his head a little. “Why, ma’am, I am very respectful of you, like everybody else here in town.” He made as though to leave again, but seemed to change his mind. “Well, let me put it this way, Miss Marlow. I am suspicious by nature. I know what sporting women are after, which is money. But I am never quite sure what nice women are after. No offense meant, Miss Marlow.”

  Again he started to leave, and again Jessie said, “Just a moment, please!” The doctor could hear her ragged breathing. She said to Morgan, “You said you didn’t like seeing him broken down under things.”

  Morgan inclined his head, warily.

  “So how you must hate yourself, Mr. Morgan!”

  Morgan’s face looked for an instant as it had when he had confronted Brunk; then it was composed again, like a door being shut, and he bowed once again, silently, and took his leave.

  Jessie put her hand down on the checkerboard and with a quick motion swept the checkers off onto the floor. “I hate him!” she whispered. “No one can blame me for hating him!” She raised her face toward the ceiling. He saw it soften and she whispered something inaudible—that must, he thought, have been addressed to Blaisedell, who had come back to her.

  She seemed to become aware of him again; she smiled, and it lit her whole face. “Oh, good night, David,” she said. “Thank you for playing checkers with me.”

  It was a dismissal, he knew, not merely for this evening, but of a companion with whom she had passed the time while she waited for Blaisedell to return. He nodded and said, “Good night, Jessie,” and backed out the door. She came after him, to close it, the opening narrowing into a thin slice of lamplight that framed her face. The door shut with a gentle sound.

  He went up the steps to his room, and sat down on his bed. He felt as though he were smothering in the thick darkness. He felt old, and d
rained of all emotion except loneliness. Through the window he could see the bright stars and a narrow shaving of moon, and from here he could hear the sounds of laughter and drinking from the saloons on Main Street. He rose and fumbled on the table for the bowl of spills and matches. He lit the lamp, the darkness paled around him; he stood with his hands on the edge of the table, staring into the bright mystery of the flame. He had taken the bottle of laudanum from his bag when there was a soft knock.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s Jimmy, Doc. Can I come in a minute?”

  “All right,” he said.

  “You’ll have to open the door for me, I guess.”

  He put down the bottle and went to open the door. Young Fitzsimmons came in, carrying his bandaged hands before him as though they were parcels. He had dark wavy hair and thick eyebrows that met over the bridge of his nose. His long, young face was grave.

  “Some things bothering, Doc.”

  “Worried about those hands, Jimmy? Here, let me cut the bandages off and have a look.” The boy’s hands had been burned so terribly he had told him he might lose them. But miraculously they were healing, although it would be a long time yet.

  “No, it’s not that,” Fitzsimmons said. He held out his hands and grinned at them. “They are coming fine—they don’t stink like they used to, do they?” He sat down on the end of the bed and his face turned grave again. “No, it’s I am kind of worried about Frank, Doc.”

  “Are you?” he said, without interest.

  “My daddy was a miner,” Fitzsimmons said. “And his before him and on back. I know about mines, and I know what you can do and can’t do when there is trouble with the company. They had troubles back in the old country my grandaddy used to tell about. I know one thing you don’t do is fire a stope.”

  “Are they talking about that?”

  “Plenty. They won’t listen to me because I am only twenty, but I know rock-drilling better than most of them, and union and company too. I know you don’t wreck a mine; because there may be trouble, but there is always a time when trouble is over for a while.”

  “I know, Jimmy,” he said. He watched the boy’s brows knit up; they looked like black caterpillars. The boy shook his head and sighed, then held up his bandaged hands again.

  “It’s been kind of good for me to be this way awhile, Doc,” he said. “It is fine to be quick with your hands, and hell not to be able to even button your fly or open a door the way I can’t. But it makes you understand, too, how you can be too quick with them. Now I have got to think every time before I reach out for anything. That’s a caution these others would be better off with.”

  “But they won’t listen to you,” he said, and smiled.

  Fitzsimmons grimaced. “There’s not three of them could beat me single-jacking before I got burnt—Brunk couldn’t. But there’s not three of them will listen to me, either. All they’ll listen to is Frank and Frenchy and old Heck. But they’ll listen to me some day!

  “Frank’s all right in a way,” he went on. “He didn’t want nothing for himself, and I expect he would jump down a shaft if it would help get a union. Except he would just as soon jump everybody else downshaft too, and then look back and find there wasn’t anybody to make a union with.”

  “I have noticed that in Brunk,” the doctor said.

  “He is that way, all right. They are all too wrapped up in how they hate MacDonald’s guts. Well, I do too, but it doesn’t do anybody much good—hating Mister Mac. He is not the only super there’ll ever be. The way they are thinking, union now is only something against MacDonald. If the company was smart enough to fire MacDonald the whole union idea’d blow up in Brunk’s face.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true, Jimmy,” he said. Fitzsimmons looked pleased.

  “I’ve tried to tell them MacDonald is nothing but company policy, and policy will change a good deal faster if the company sees it is good sense to change. Burning the stope or the rest of it’ll just bring in a harder man than MacDonald. But they won’t listen.”

  He sat there frowning. This was the most serious the doctor had ever seen Jimmy Fitzsimmons; even when he had warned him about his hands he had been cheerful. He was a strange boy, though not a boy. He wondered if there was not more iron in him than there was in Brunk. There was certainly better sense.

  “Well, Jimmy,” he said. “I would vote for you for president of the union rather than Brunk, I’ll say that.”

  He had meant it jokingly; he saw that Fitzsimmons had not taken it so. “No,” the boy said, very seriously. “I’m too young yet.” He looked up from under his thick eyebrows and grinned again. “But I would vote for you, Doc.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said; his heart began to labor, as though he had been running.

  “No, I’d vote for you,” Fitzsimmons said. “There’s others that would too. There’s a lot that’s sensible but just get carried along by the wild ones like Brunk because they’re loudest. Doc, what we need is somebody that can talk straight with MacDonald and Godbold and the rest of them and not be made a fool of. Somebody that is quick and smart, but somebody that is respectable too. It’s true what Frank says. But because we are not respectable don’t mean a man doesn’t have pride in being a miner. My grandaddy and my dad had pride in it, and me too. Brunk doesn’t much, underneath all. That is his trouble trying to deal with MacDonald—so that all he can think to do is things like stope-burning. But there is talking and dealing has to be done too, and that is where you would do for us, Doc. Some of us have talked of it already.”

  “I’m no miner, Jimmy.”

  “You are for us, Doc. Everybody knows that. That’s the main thing.”

  He wondered if he really was; he knew he was against the things that destroyed and maimed them.

  Fitzsimmons said quickly, “Well, I guess there is no use talking about it just yet. I guess they are going to have to bust loose this time again, and maybe they will learn from it.” Then he said, “I thought of even going to tell Schroeder they was thinking of firing the Medusa, but I couldn’t do that. That would bust me with them if they ever found out.”

  The doctor was surprised at the calculation in Fitzsimmons’ voice; it was a side he hadn’t seen before.

  Fitzsimmons gazed back at him boldly, as though aware of what he was thinking. He grinned again, not quite so boyishly. “What’s wrong with that?” he said. “Sometimes if you know better than a bunch what has to be done you have to undercut them a little. You have to be careful, though, for they are hard when they think a man is against them. They will listen to me some day,” he said, and rose. Then he laughed. “And don’t think you are out of it, Doc. I have got plans for you.”

  The doctor rose to open the door for Fitzsimmons, who now thanked him for his time and said good night very formally. He went back to the table and took up the bottle of laudanum and held it until his hand warmed the glass. But finally he put it back into his bag, and undressed and went to bed.

  In bed he could not sleep, not merely because he had not taken his evening potion, but because always, in the darkness, Jessie’s face hung in his eyes. He saw Blaisedell drunken and sagging, and yet, try as he would, he could not look upon him with contempt. He saw Brunk’s face, with the jealousy as pitiful and hopeless as his own behind the hate. He saw Morgan’s face, full of murder, and yet it was the face of a man much more than the mere unscrupulous and violent gambler he had seemed. He remembered Jessie and Morgan crying at the same instant to Brunk to stop, in their different voices that were as one voice, and remembered them only minutes later facing each other as deadly enemies.

  It seemed to him that in this night he had seen many symptoms of the obsession which he had already known in Jessie. He had seen that both Jessie and Morgan accepted the importance of Blaisedell’s name and all that it implied even in their antipathy for one another. He had seen the same obsession, though not for Blaisedell, in possession of Brunk, and even stronger in Jimmy Fitzsimmons. It seemed to him,
as he considered it, more than an obsession, a disease of the spirit; and yet he wondered if this disease, this obsession, this struggle to pre-eminence, was not the reason for mankind’s triumph on the earth—the complex brain developed to plot for it, the opposing thumb to grasp at it—if it was not what set mankind apart from the animals. No animal cared what was its name.

  He stared out at the bright stars over Warlock, regarding, now, himself, and what Fitzsimmons had said about his leading the miners. He felt no call within himself. He felt no urge to strive to be anything more than what, long ago, he had been content to be. He considered his freedom and his bondage, his own soul’s sickness and his own particular health, and wondered at the will he did not possess.

  31. MORGAN USES HIS KNIFE

  ACROSS from Morgan at the desk in the office of the Glass Slipper, Clay sat with his fair head canted forward, his lips pouting a little. He looked white and ill, Morgan thought; Clay had had a bellyful of whisky last night, but he looked sicker than that.

  “What do you hear from Porphyry City, Morg?” he said. “I hear it is booming some.”

  “It is booming right here.”

  “Not for me,” Clay said.

  “Why, Porphyry City sounds fine, from what I hear. You thinking of going there?”

  “I don’t know,” Clay said. “I suppose it wouldn’t be much different.”

  Morgan laughed and said, “You were surely bound and determined to go back to the General Peach last night. See the lady today?”

  Clay glanced up at him and nodded tersely. Then he leaned back in his chair and said, “I shouldn’t have gone back there.”

  He nodded too.

  “It is not her, Morg,” Clay said, as though to answer what he, Morgan, had not wanted to ask. “It is everybody. I can feel it walking down the street or anywhere. Even if there is nobody around I can feel it. I can’t do what they want. They don’t even know what they want, and I can’t do anything, for anything I do is either all the way wrong or not right enough.”