Border Fever

by Pronzini, Bill

  Thomas faced the letter toward the window again, and studied the postmark.

  April 14, 1902.

  Nine months ago.

  And with a postmark from Tucson, Arizona. Is that where Adams was?

  Again suppressing an urge to open the letter, Thomas instead crossed the room, lay the letter down on a lamp table while he bent to pull a wooden cartridge box from under his bed. He had to move aside a stack of Strand magazines to get at the box, which was covered with dust. He rested the box on his knees and blew the dust off. Glancing at the unmade covers of the bed, he winced momentarily, realizing just how soft he had become. Instead of sharp military corners, the covers were piled in a heap, unmade.

  He thought of Sherlock Holmes.

  At least I haven’t reduced myself to taking cocaine.

  He shook his head.

  That’s no excuse.

  He turned his attention to the box, and went slowly through it. Two letters from Lincoln Reeves on top, the most recent received nearly a month before. Whose turn was it to write? With shame, he realized that he had not written back to Reeves, not answered either this letter or the last. The young man he had thought of as his Watson must wonder at this point if Thomas was even alive.

  He set the two letters aside on the unmade bed, resolving to answer them this day.

  Next were family papers, the deed for this very house from his deceased Aunt Martha Johnston Mullin. The house had been left to her by the abolitionist Fay Gordon, who had died proud though nearly penniless after Boston ostracized her for her relationship with a former black slave. There were other papers relating to the property, various town ordinances meant to ostracize the property itself, abolitionist lawyer writs blocking those moves by the city of Boston, etc.

  Next was a flat of cardboard, and beneath that, Thomas’s Army papers.

  He had located the last correspondence from Bill Adams in a moment. Nearly three years. The handwriting on the last letter, from Adams’s newest, and last, post at Fort Brayden, in northern Arizona, was firm and confident. He remembered the letter as being full of hope. Adams would be retiring in six months, and moving to Arizona to live with his daughter. There had been some chatting about old times, about how they would have to get together after Adams’s retirement even though both of them knew that would probably not happen, about Bill’s sorrow that Thomas’s bid for reenlistment had been turned down. Thomas even recalled Adam’s phrasing, “They stepped on your neck real good, Thomas, and I’m sorry there’s nothing I can do about it. Comes with the territory of laying low on the ladder all these years. If only Grierson or one of the other mucky-mucks were still in power in Washington...”

  Thomas laid the letter back in the cartridge box, rose, and retrieved Adams’s new letter from the lamp table.

  So. . . he thought, a faint stirring of juices long dormant, of interest and excitement, already beginning to rise within him.

  He opened the letter carefully, unsticking the back flap, noting how carelessly it had been sealed to begin with.

  He pulled the letter from within.

  As he unfolded and looked at it, a pang of sorrow drowned out the rise of interest; but then the excitement quickly overcame the sorrow, pushing it to the back of his mind.

  He pulled the letter up to his nose. It nearly reeked of alcohol. An amber stain, different from the coffee stain on the envelope, washed the upper right-hand corner of the page. That was where Adams would have kept his whiskey glass. He was, Thomas remembered, right-handed. And so, that coffee stain on the envelope was evidence that the letter had been written in the throes of alcohol, and was probably sealed and mailed during the aftermath of attempted recovery, while Adams had been drinking coffee.

  The letter was dated April 10th, bearing this out.

  If anything, the handwriting on the letter was even worse than that on the envelope.

  Thomas folded the letter flat on the table top and read:

  Dear Thomas,

  It is not with joy that I write you this time, I’m afraid. Things have not gone as I had planned. Perhaps if this were the Army, things could be handled differently, but I doubt it. We both know how the Army operates, and in this case the result would be no better. There is a man in Tempe, name of Cross, who would help, but I heard he’s out with the 66th, scouting, and won’t be back from California for at least eighteen months. He owes me, but that’s another story.

  My Abby is gone, Thomas. . . .

  Here there was an obvious pause while Adams took a drink; there was evidence that the spill on the letter had occurred at this point. Thomas could almost see his friend blotting the alcohol from the page before continuing. The letter went on:

  I’ll be honest with you, because you’d figure out anyway that I’m in the bottle and feeling badly. Seems I invested a bit too much in my life after the Army, and when things did not turn out as I planned I took a bit of a fall.

  But my Abby, as I said, is gone. She’s only nineteen, now, Thomas, you may remember my talking about her years ago. To me she was only a baby then, and her momma was raising her on the Papagos reservation here, though in Christian ways. In my head, she was always my little girl, but when I came back to Tucson she was all grown up, with ideas of her own. She didn’t want to live in Tucson City with me, at least not at first; but even after she came to live with me I could see she wasn’t happy. But then, things seemed to get better. And then she disappeared.

  Again there was a pause, Thomas could feel it. And once again when the man went back to writing, he was drunker, and his hand less steady:

  Thomas, I’m a desperate man, if you can’t tell. Abby’s mother was a good woman, and tried to raise her the way I wanted.

  I have no right to ask this of you, old friend. I realize that Boston must seem very far away from the Army and from Arizona, but . . .

  Again a lengthy pause, before Adams asked the question he felt he had to steal himself to ask:

  You’re the best friend I’ve ever known, Thomas, and the best tracker. If you could help me, I would be beholden to you for my life. I hesitate to ask you for old times’ sake, but if that’s all that it takes, for my daughter, I’ll do that. All right, my daughter is Injun, at least half, but she’s all I have, and I don’t want a horrible thing to happen. I’m afraid I must sign off now with this plea I’ve made. . . .

  The letter was unsigned, with a running line, blotted carelessly, after the last word. Perhaps Adams had thought to reopen the letter, remembering that he hadn’t signed it. Thomas wondered, also, if the man had hesitated to ask for his help, or found it so difficult, because Thomas was Negro.

  That’s an evil thought.

  Sighing, Thomas walked to the window and looked out. Still holding the letter, he put his hands behind his back and clasped them. No, it wasn’t such an evil thought. As much as Bill Adams was a friend, he had still found it difficult to ask Thomas’s help, simply because of the difference in their skin color. Adams would deny it, but still, here in this time, thirty years after the War Between the States, Thomas was a second-class citizen merely because his skin was dark. In the Army, especially in the Buffalo Soldiers, the difference between him and Adams had been easier to ignore; but here, in the real world, the stigma was unavoidable.

  Thomas stared out at the January white of Boston, where the people professed equality but didn’t live it, and thought of the warmness of Tucson.

  Adams had found it difficult to ask. But he had asked.

  I’ll help you, old friend, Thomas thought. I’ll help you merely because you’re my friend, and, almost as importantly, because if I don’t, if I stay here in two-faced Boston, pacing the rooms of this little house and brooding, I will lose my mind, along with the rest of my pride.

  Having decided, Thomas turned away from the window. There was a perceptible smile on his face. He held the letter almost lovingly in his hand, and placed it carefully on the lamp table as he turned to make the bed in sharp military corners, and thought of
what he would need to take with him.

  Chapter Two

  Three days later, in Birmingham, Alabama, Lincoln Reeves’s own life was turned upside down by the arrival of a letter. This one was delivered by a black man, though, with whom, if Lincoln had any enmity, he was unaware of it.

  “Nice day, George,” Lincoln said, meeting the man at his own rickety gate. Like everything else on the sharecropper’s farm, it needed fixing. Like everything else, it would have to wait in line.

  “They all the same to me, Mistah Reeves,” George said, shaking his head. Lincoln tried to recall if he had ever seen the man smile, and came up empty. “One day goes intuh the next, and then th’ nex’ day come aftuh that.”

  “Whatever you say, George.” Lincoln took his mail from the dour mailman and smiled. He looked at the slate-blue sky over the dusty field, the clouds, felt the almost spring-like warmth. As the mailman turned away, already shaking his head, Lincoln said, “Couple of months it’ll be spring, and then I can get to planting. And won’t that be fine, George?”

  “Whatever you says, Mistuh Reeves,” George said, continuing to shake his head as he went through the gate, closing it behind him. He chuckled slightly. “Whatever you says. You say hi to that wife and baby of yours, now, Mr. Reeves.”

  Lincoln watched the man retreat down the dusty road, then looked at the sky again. It would be fine. It certainly would. His first crop, on his own — well, almost his own — farm, and this was a fine day, and this was, after all, a fine life. Inside he heard Matty singing to the baby, and Lincoln had, at this moment, to admit to himself that he had done all right for himself. He had come about as far as he had wished, if not as far as he had hoped. And Thomas Mullin had told him — ordered him — to stay in the Army. What did the old man know? . . .

  A moment later, glancing at the mail in his hand, Lincoln had a moment of wonder. Had he conjured Thomas Mullin up? For there, at the top of the thin stack of letters, was a crisply cornered letter from the Lieutenant, the first Lincoln had received in nearly a year. And here Lincoln had begun to worry about the old man, that things were slipping for him. Lincoln thumbed the flap of the letter open, wincing at the ragged tear he was putting in it, almost waiting for Mullin to snap a comment at him:

  “What’s the matter, Trooper? Are you so lazy that you can’t open an envelope properly? What if that envelope were evidence? What if you were destroying evidence?”

  Reeves pulled the thin sheet out, laughing inwardly at his picture of the man he had conjured up. Even now, even at this distance in time and miles, Lieutenant Thomas Mullin still made Lincoln’s back stiffen up in salute, his mind more alert. It was silly... .

  Lincoln read the short note, and instantly felt himself go rigid and alert. Not so silly.

  “Matty!” he called, already wincing at the fight he would have with his wife. He could only hope she would understand.

  Resolutely, steeling himself for the confrontation to come, he mounted the creaking steps of the farmhouse, vowing to fix them as soon as he returned, opened the squeaking screen door to enter.

  A day later, filled with guilt and remorse, he was packed and ready to go. Another fine day was dawning; it would be even warmer than yesterday, the temperature climbing perhaps into the sixties. Wonderful weather for January. There were a lot of chores that wouldn’t get done today. . . .

  “Matty,” he said, unable to say anything else, holding his hands out in supplication. His carpetbag lay at his feet on the porch. In Matty’s arms, the baby cooed and twisted, following the flight of an early morning crow cawing through the air over the near field.

  “You say you’ll be back before planting,” Matty said solemnly.

  “Matty, I promise. You can get Jedediah and Marcus to help until then. Jedediah knows how to fix things, the pump and such, and if by any chance I was late he could start the early plowing.” Seeing her eyebrows go up he continued in a rush. “Though I know that won’t be necessary. But . . . if it is, he’ll do it. He owes me big, I got him started last year. And Marcus is good with the baby, and can run chores to town. Oh please, Matty, don’t be mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Lincoln,” she said evenly. “I’m mad at Thomas Mullin and the Army.”

  “Don’t be, Matty.”

  “When the Army gets hold of you, it’s the only thing can make you act like this. Everything else, you’re your own man. I just can’t understand why you have to drop your life and run. Especially to help some white man.”

  He reached out to take one of her hands, but instead, she shifted the baby from the crook of her other arm and handed it to him.

  “Say good-bye to your papa, Washington,” Matty said coldly. “Say good-bye to your papa who’s leaving you to help some crazy old fool find a drunk white man’s Indian daughter.”

  The baby cooed, looking up into Lincoln’s face and smiling. Lincoln looked at Matty imploringly.

  “Matty, I’ve told you. These are the only two men from the Army I would do this for. Sergeant Adams saved my life. And Lieutenant Mullin is —

  “Like a father to you,” Matty finished. “I’ve only heard it a thousand times, Lincoln.” Suddenly, as she saw him reach down for his bag, her tone softened.

  He straightened up, handed the baby to her. “I have to go, Matty,” he said, turning away.

  “Lincoln —” She put her hand on his arm, gripped him tight, turned him around.

  He looked down at her. “Matty, I said I’m sor…

  “I know,” she whispered, reaching up to kiss him. Suddenly she was crying. “I know, and I understand. But you have to be careful.”

  “Of course I’ll be careful,” he said. He brought his lips down to the baby’s head and kissed his crown. “And you be careful, too.”

  When he looked back at Matty she was still crying. “Oh, Lincoln.” she said, hugging him tight.

  “I know, Matty, I know.”

  Gently, he pulled away from her, walked down the steps, and didn’t look back until he was far away, across his sharecropped field, at the edge of the land that might one day be his or his son’s.

  When he looked back he waved, and Matty waved back, and made little Washington wave, too.

  Chapter Three

  Steel your mind, Thomas.

  He hadn’t remembered how truly tedious a long train trip could be. What at first began as an exciting excursion, a setting out for new places on a machine that traveled the rails faster than any man could run or ride, became, after the first few days, a boring series of embarkings and debarkings, facing an endless dull panorama of shorn trees and winter whiteness. What had at first been charming soon turned maddening, and Thomas was thankful for the thin stack of unread Strand magazines he had brought in his bag. He had particularly enjoyed Conan Doyle’s most recent adventure, published in the December 1902 edition, recounting the “Adventure of the Speckled Band.” Conan Doyle was back at his best, after a disastrous interlude where he had tried to kill Sherlock Holmes off, then, after an outcry which Thomas had only been too willing to add to, posting three letters in as many days to the Strand after they had dared to offer to the reading public the outrage titled “An Affair at Reichenbach Falls.”

  But the present adventure was more up to snuff, with Holmes employing all of his deductive powers to great end, and Thomas knew this Holmes story was a fine one because he had been unable to guess its ending. That had only happened once in the last year, a sure sign that Conan Doyle had been losing his powers.

  Perhaps we’re both coming back, Conan Doyle, he thought.

  He shifted his weight on his bag, and looked out the window. The baggage car was empty now, another Negro having gotten off in Fort Worth. Only twice in the past two weeks had he sat in the last passenger car, but that was back in the East, where segregation was more subtle, and now that he was back in the South, the more overt forms of racism were evident. But baggage cars could be made comfortable, and the Negro porter on this train had taken good care
of him, and made sure that he was fed properly and allowed to use the men’s facilities after the white passengers had gone to bed for the evening... .

  The window was small, and smudged, but it showed the same relentless vista of bleak winter, the same denuded trees, only mercifully shy of snow.

  Thomas tucked his Strand magazine away and drew out the papers in his jacket pocket.

  The first was the letter from Bill Adams, which he had been over numerous times. Always he came to the same conclusions. The second was a telegram from Lincoln Reeves, waiting for him in Kansas City, as he had instructed, with one word, Yes.

  These two he put away, finding no more interest in them. The third, however, still held his attention. It was another telegram, this one from Tucson, from the landlord of the hotel where Bill Adams had been staying. Though it was few in words, it told Thomas much:

  ADAMS BELIEVED DEAD STOP. INJUN BEING HELD STOP. MARSHAL SAYS NO ARMY IN TERFERENCE NEEDED STOP. CATES.

  Apparently Mr. Cates had misunderstood Thomas’s own telegram, regarding his present status with the U.S. Army. That was fine, and irrelevant. Besides the fact that his friend might be dead, Thomas found he could read volumes from the short message.

  First, it was obvious that Bill had gone after his daughter and was missing somewhere on the Papagos Reservation. This did not change Thomas’s mission, but only made it more urgent. Bill Adams, despite his alcoholism, knew how to travel and how to survive. Thomas would reserve judgment on his death until he had seen a body. Secondly, there was an Indian being held for Adams’s supposed murder. This alone Thomas found curious, since Cates had stated that Bill was believed to be dead. And the Marshal who was handling this case had apparently decided that he didn’t like Thomas already, based merely on the fact, however misinterpreted, that Thomas was an Army man. This implied friction with the local Army people. Nowhere had Thomas mentioned that he was Negro, and this fact was apparently not known. So the marshal, and Mr. Cates, would have a surprise for them when Thomas arrived.