What the Dead Men Say

by Ed Gorman

  3

  Tess was his littlest girl. She was four. Because of the heat she wore a pair of ribbed summer drawers. Her sister Eloise was asleep. Tess was at the doorway, giving Griff a hug he had to bend down to get. Her body was hot and damp and as always she felt almost frighteningly fragile in his arms. He kissed her blue eyes and her pink lips and then he hugged her, feeling the doll cradled in her arm press against him.

  “Will you kiss Betty, too?”

  “Kind of hot for a kiss, isn’t it?” Griff said playfully.

  “You kissed me, Daddy. Can’t you kiss her?”

  Griff looked over at his wife in the rattan rocker and winked. “Oh, I guess I could.”

  So he picked Betty up and kissed her on the forehead and handed her back.

  ‘“Night, punkin’,” he said, bending down and holding Tess to his leg. She was so small, she scarcely touched his thigh.

  “Will you bring me ice cream?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tonight, hon.”

  “How come?”

  “I have some business to take care of.”

  “What kind of business?”

  He laughed. “Dora, don’t you think it’s time you put your little girl to bed?”

  Dora got up from the rocker and came over. She leaned down and picked up Tess. Tess held tight to Betty.

  Dora said, “How about a kiss for me, too?”

  Griff obliged. He held her longer than he meant to and he closed his eyes as he kissed her. He knew that she knew something was wrong. He’d told her that Kittredge wanted to talk to him about some haying later on in the fall, that the hay man wanted an answer tomorrow morning. But she knew. All during dinner he’d felt her eyes on him. Gray, loving, gentle eyes. Now, holding their youngest, she touched him and the feel of her fingers on his forearm made him feel weak, as if he were caught up in some kind of reverie. He wanted to be younger, back before the holdup and the little girl getting killed. How stupid it all seemed now, being so concerned about not having a job, feeling so afraid that he’d been pushed to such extremes. Hell, he didn’t have nearly as good a job even now but they were making it and making it fine.

  “You don’t have to go, you know,” Dora said. A tall woman, not pretty but handsome in her clean purposeful way, she tugged on his shirtsleeve much as Tess had done earlier. “You could always tell Kittredge you just weren’t interested.”

  “Could be some good money. You never can tell.”

  She said, “Is Carlyle going to be there?”

  “Carlyle? Why would he be there? I haven’t seen Carlyle in a long time.”

  “It just feels funny, tonight.”

  “What’s ‘feel funny,’ Momma?” Tess said.

  He leaned in and kissed them both again. “I won’t be too long,” he said, and then he was gone.

  ***

  Long before there was a brick-and-steel bridge near the dam, Griff used to go there as a boy and throw his fishing line in and spend the day. He’d always bring an apple, a piece of jerky, and enough water to last the long hot day. Other boys would come but

  Griff always managed to stay alone, liking it better that way. But much as he liked it during the day, he liked it even better at night, when the water over the dam fell silver in the moonlight, and when fishermen in boats downriver could be seen standing up against the golden circle of the moon, casting out their lines and waiting, waiting for their smallmouth bass and catfish and sheepshead and northern pike. In the war, where he’d served in the Eleventh Infantry under General Ord during the siege of Corinth and the occupation of Bolivar, he’d lain awake nights thinking of his fishing spot, and the firefly darkness, and the rush and roar of the dam, and rain-clouds passing the moon.

  He was hoping to be a little early tonight so he could appreciate all this before Kittredge and Carlyle got there, but as soon as he left the main path over by the swings he saw two figures outlined against the sky and he knew that tonight there wouldn’t be even that much peace.

  Kittredge said, “Good thing you got here now. Carlyle’s gone crazy.”

  “Crazy, hell,” Carlyle said. “I’m just sayin’ we should take care of him before he takes care of us.”

  Griff sighed. Things hadn’t changed any in the years the men had been apart. Kittredge and Carlyle had never gotten along; it had always been up to Griff to keep things smooth between them. Tonight was especially bad. Even from several feet away, Griff could see and smell that Carlyle was drunk.

  “Plus we’ve got some complications,” Kittredge said. “And I don’t mean just the little girl’s father.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  So Kittredge explained how Sheriff Dodds had come into the roundhouse tavern and pretty much said that he knew the three men had stuck up the bank and killed the little girl-maybe not killed her on purpose but killed her nonetheless-and that if he, Dodds, had to choose fates, he’d take his chances with the law instead of with some crazy man with a Winchester.

  “That’s why I say we kill Ryan,” Carlyle said, “before he kills us.”

  “Shut up,” Griff said.

  They stood downslope from the dam so they cold talk over the roar. Griff rolled himself a cigarette, taking the smoke deep into his lungs, savoring the burning. He said, “Maybe we should take it to a vote.”

  “Take what to a vote?” Carlyle said.

  “What the sheriff said.”

  “You mean turning ourselves in?” Kittredge said.

  “Yup,” Griff said. “Maybe that’s the easiest way to do things.”

  “That what you want to do, Griff?” Carlyle said.

  “I didn’t say one way or the other; all I said was that maybe we should take it to a vote.”

  “I been in Fort Madison,” Carlyle said. “I’d never last in there again. I’m too god damn old for prison.”

  “So you’re voting against it?” Griff said.

  “God damn right I’m votin’ against it.”

  “Kittredge? What do you think we should do?”

  Kittredge ran a hand across his face, turned slightly to look out at the water over the grassy hump of the slope, then spat into the earth. He turned back to his partners. “You think he’d listen to our side of it?”

  “Who?” Griff said.

  “Ryan.”

  “Doubt it,” Griff said. “Put yourself in his place. Your daughter gets killed by three men and they come and try and tell you their side. Would you listen to them?”

  Kittredge thought a moment. Then, “Maybe there’s a third way, instead of turnin’ ourselves in or just waitin’ for Ryan to shoot us.”

  “What would that be?” Griff said.

  “What Carlyle said.”

  “Damn right,” Carlyle said. “What I said.”

  “Shoot Ryan, you mean?” Griff said.

  “Yes.”

  “Damn right,” Carlyle said again. “Let’s vote right now.”

  Griff paid him no attention. He turned to Kittredge. “That’s the tempting way, I know. But think about it. You said the sheriff pretty much believes we’re the men involved in the robbery. But maybe he doesn’t have hard evidence.”

  “So what?” Carlyle said.

  Griff kept talking straight to Kittredge, even though Kittredge wasn’t responding. “So if Ryan gets killed, who do you think the sheriff’s going to blame? Us.” He paused. “There’s at least some possibility that the sheriff will never be able to prove we had a part in that robbery. But if we go after Ryan ourselves-”

  “I want a damn vote,” Carlyle said.

  “He’s right, Carlyle,” Kittredge said.

  “What?” Carlyle said.

  “He’s right. Griff is. By goin’ after Ryan, we’d just be admitting that we were guilty.”

  “You votin’ with him, then?”

  “Yes,” Kittredge said. “I am.”

  Griff allowed himself a small sigh. “We wait.”

  “We what?”

  “We wait, Carlyle.
We see what Ryan’s going to do next. That’s the only way we stay out of trouble.”

  “What if he tries to kill us?” Carlyle said.

  “Then we have the sheriff take care of him. You know how Dodds is. He won’t allow anybody to start shooting people. He’ll either run Ryan in or run him out of town. Either way, he takes care of our problem for us.”

  “You make it sound pretty god damn simple,” Carlyle said. “It’s a lot simpler than shooting somebody,” Griff said, anger in his voice now. “You seem to forget something, Carlyle. We’re not killers. Hell, we’re not even thieves. We didn’t get any money at all from that robbery. We killed a little girl by accident and we’re going to fry in hell for what we did. But that still don’t make us killers. That still don’t mean we could pick up a gun and kill a man in cold blood.” He nodded to Kittredge. “At least Kittredge and I couldn’t.” He turned back to Carlyle. “And I don’t think you could, either. Not when you came right down to it. You like your hootch and you like your whores but that’s a long damn way from bein’ a killer.”

  “You didn’t see his eyes this afternoon,” Carlyle said.

  “We killed his little girl. How do you think he’d look?” Griff said.

  “So we wait?” Kittredge said.

  “Yes,” Griff said, “we just wait and see what happens.”

  “Shit,” Carlyle said, and pulled away from the two men, wobbling drunkenly over to a huge elm tree. In the darkness they could hear him splashing piss against the tree.

  “He’s gets crazier the older he gets,” Kittredge said.

  Griff nodded. “The way I see it, we’ve got two problems.”

  “Two?”

  “Ryan and Carlyle. Either one of them could do something crazy. Damn crazy.”

  Kittredge sighed. “My stomach’s in knots. I couldn’t eat tonight.”

  “We’ll keep an eye on him,” Griff said, “and we’ll be alright.”

  But he couldn’t muster much conviction in his voice. All he could do was just stand there and watch Carlyle come wobbling back, zipping up his pants as he moved through the grass.

  Griff just wanted to be home in bed with his wife and have his daughters come laughing in just after dawn, ready for a new day. But he had the terrible feeling that that simple pleasure was beyond him now. Maybe forever.

  “I still want a god damn vote on the subject,” Carlyle said as he swerved up to the two men.

  Which was when Griff slapped him hard across the mouth. Slapped him as hard as he could, hard enough to knock him to his knees.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have done that,” Kittredge said, sounding tense.

  Griff nodded. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.”

  “You sonofabitch, you sonofabitch,” Carlyle said, furious but drunk enough that he could not get easily to his feet. “You sonofabitch.”

  Griff walked away from the other two men. He went over and stood by the dam, the silver foaming water falling in the mosquito-thick night air. Thirty years ago, the boy he’d been had stood here all filled with great unbounded hope. How could he have known that all these long years later he would be standing here, the killer of a little girl, and the little girl’s father come to pay him back?

  He shook his head and stared with great sorrow at the roaring, tumbling water.

  Then he went back to tell Carlyle he was sorry for slapping him.

  4

  James did the most unlikely thing of all, fell asleep just after he finished making love to the girl. Several glasses of wine had made him drowsy. The girl had let him sleep. She’d felt sorry for him. Not only was this the first time for him, drinking had also led him to talking about his old man. James had gotten teary, telling her how much he’d loved his father; and then he’d fallen asleep. His uncle had paid for two full hours; she was going to let him take advantage of the time even if all it meant was lying next to him thinking about her own parents. Anyway, James was gentle and sweet compared to the coarse men she was used to. Earlier tonight, for instance, a miner hadn’t even let her get lubricated. He’d just pushed in, hurting her. Now, like James, she closed her eyes and dozed.

  The gunshot woke him. He sat straight up in bed, muttering through the mists of sleep and booze. “What happened?” James said.

  Next to him in the darkness, coming awake, too, the girl said, “I don’t know. I never heard no gunshot in here before. Something terrible must have happened.”

  Outside the door you could hear heavy boots clomping on the wooden floor; men cursing and pulling on their clothes; women saying over and over, “What happened? What happened?” as they came out of their rooms. It was like a fire drill.

  James pulled on his own clothes. As he started to leave, the girl grabbed him by the wrist. “You be careful out there.”

  “I will.”

  There in the moonlight, she smiled. She sure wasn’t pretty but he sure did like her. “I’m glad it was with me, the first time.”

  “So am I,” James said, and squeezed her hand.

  The hallway and the staircase were packed with retreating men. Obviously, nobody who had to make any pretense of being respectable wanted to be caught in a whorehouse. The notion now was to get the hell out of there.

  On the way down the stairs, jostled in among other men, James was gawked at, pointed at, and smirked at. Old men with white hair and old men with muttonchops and old men with gold teeth peered at him wondering what the hell a fresh kid like him was doing there.

  All James was concerned about was Uncle Septemus. Where was he and was he all right?

  But even being pushed and shoved down the stairs by the crowd, even worried about what was going on, even sort of hungover from the alcohol… James was still smilingly aware of tonight’s significance. It wasn’t that he felt like a man exactly, it was more that he felt as if he’d learned something, that women, even ones who had to earn their living pleasing men, were every bit as real and complicated as he himself was. He’d actually liked the girl upstairs and that to him was more amazing than making love, which was wonderful and something he sure wanted to do again, but was not quite the heady mystical experience he’d assumed it would be after years of building up fantasies about it. He knew he’d never forget the girl, and not just because of the physical experience, either, but because of her rough intelligence and kindness in the face of his fears and patience in the face of his inexperience.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he found his uncle.

  Septemus sat in a straight-backed chair, so drunk he couldn’t hold up his head, his six-shooter lying on the floor. You could smell the gun smoke, acrid even above the whiskey and perfume. The player piano was just now being turned off. Men were piling out front, side, and back doors.

  The madame, a wiry little woman in a fancy blue silk dress and a hat that looked like a squatting porcupine, glared down at Uncle Septemus and said, “Who knows this sonofabitch anyway?”

  “I do.”

  She whirled around to James.

  “What'd he do, ma’m?”

  “What’d he do? Why the sonofabitch started talking about some little girl gettin’ killed or some god damn thing and he went crazy. Started tearin’ up the room and callin’ out her name and then he started firin’ his gun!”

  “He didn’t hurt the lady, though?”

  “The lady?”

  “The girl he was with.”

  She smirked. “Ain’t used to hearin’ ’em called ladies.” Several of the girls standing around laughed about this. “No, he didn’t hurt the girl.” She shook her head. Her anger went abruptly, and something like pity came into her voice. “Poor god damn bastard. Was it his daughter got killed?”

  “Yes, ma’m?”

  “She young?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Poor god damn bastard.”

  “Somebody shot her.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “Get him out of here, kid. The gunshots’ll bring the sheriff and you don’t want to answer a lot of ques
tions to that sonofabitch.”

  James went over and got his arm under Uncle Septemus and helped him to his feet.

  It was obvious Uncle Septemus had no idea where he was. Sometimes his head would roll back and he’d try to focus his brown eyes but he couldn’t. Once he said “Clarice,” as if she were somewhere around him and he were waiting for her.

  “C’mon, kid, I’ll help you,” the madame said.

  She got them out the back door and into the night.

  There was yellow lamplight angling out the back door and making the long dusty grass green. Then the madame closed the door and everything was a rich dark prairie blue, the moon clear and round, the banking clouds gray, the elms and oaks and poplars black silhouettes against the ebony sky.

  By the time he reached the street-four blocks from the hotel- the madame had turned the player piano on again. On the night air it managed to sound festive and lonely at the same time.

  James dragged Uncle Septemus back to the hotel. He got sort of underneath him so Septemus could lay across his back and then he just started walking, Septemus’s feet dragging in the dust. James was sweaty and winded and sore in no time but he didn’t stop.

  Only once did Uncle Septemus say anything. He seemed to say “Kill,” and he seemed to say it two or three times. Then he was unconscious again, James taking him down alleys to avoid curious lawmen. What did Uncle Septemus mean by “kill” anyway?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  1

  Septemus Ryan woke up at dawn. He didn’t know where he was. He rolled over on the bed and looked in the gray morning light at his nephew asleep and snoring in the bed across from him. Close by roosters crowed and dogs barked. A milk wagon or a water wagon or a freight wagon jangled by in the street below. He was hot from the heat, which was already in the eighties, and also hot from his hangover. He even felt a little feverish. He’d had several hard years drinking, ever since the death of Clarice, and the drinking was taking its toll. Bloody stools, sometimes frighteningly bloody ones, from hemorrhoids that liquor only inflamed. Dry heaves in the morning sometimes, sticking his finger down his throat till the vomit came up in a hot orange gush that had a recoil like a hunting rifle. And disorientation. His employees had long ago started making jokes about his drinking, winking and smiling to each other and even shaking their heads in pity. Poor sonofabitch. Daughter’s dead and he can’t get over it. These days he wanted whores. He wanted them even though much of the time he was too drunk to do anything with them. He just got kind of crazy sometimes. He was always paying bills submitted to him by angry madames. Come back here and try that shit again and you god damn see what happens. He never hurt the girls. He just destroyed the rooms he was in and then usually broke down bawling. He had no idea what this was all about. He didn’t care, either.