“What are you reading these days?”
“Suetonius,” he said. “Re-reading him. Maggie’s library. You?”
“Nothing at the moment. My books stayed in San Francisco. For a long time I used to go to the Mechanic’s Institute and read there in my free time.”
“I do most of my reading at the saloon, in the slow hours.” It was remarkable how he resembled my father, who’d died a much younger man than I was now, and not much older than Clyde. It was at that moment that I saw how much he resembled me as well, and I felt a sudden piercing sorrow and fervent hope that the resemblance was only physical.
I handed him the Procopius. “I found this in San Francisco before I left and read it on the trip east.”
“I’m not familiar with this.” He eyed it curiously, opened it, examined the title pages, and then began to read the first page. He was laughing before he could have been halfway down the page. “How salacious,” he said. “May I borrow it?”
“Keep it,” I said.
He nodded. “Do you think you’ll come back sometime?”
“I only stayed away before for fear of being hanged.”
“Not much chance of that,” he said. “Unless you shoot Mr. Leval again.” He snickered and looked out the side of his eye at me.
“I won’t shoot him,” I said. “He’s not long for this world anyway.” We watched a pack of dogs running east down the street, yelping and snapping at one another, and I wondered where they’d all come from, if they’d all got loose in the storm and banded together or if they ran together all the time. When they were gone I spoke again. “I might do something else before I leave, though, that I could swing for.”
He looked sideways at me again, but this time there was no silent laugh implicit in his expression.
EPILOGUE
Ventura, Cal.
June the 10th, 1935
Dear Clyde,
Trust you and your young wife are well, and the boy. All here are healthy and as prosperous as can be hoped. Flavia is laid up with a cold and Jake is in a foul mood about dinner not being on the table when he comes home from work, but if the alternative is me cooking he’s happy to do it himself.
We are in the midst of the “June Gloom” here, with fog lying heavy on the coast every morning, sometimes lasting all day. Today on my daily constitutional I witnessed an automobile accident at the intersection of Poli and Ann Streets, just a few blocks east of Flavia’s house. A beer truck hit a Plymouth, both drivers blinded by the fog. No one was badly hurt, though the driver of the Plymouth—still drunk from the night before— cracked his head on his windshield and bled quite a bit. The yeasty smell of beer rising from the macadam was quite pleasant, to tell the truth.
Your brother Marc writes that his daughter is now out of nursing school, and plans to move to Wichita for hospital work. I trust you will keep abreast of her activities and watch over her in an avuncular manner; she isn’t a city girl, though Marc says she likes to imagine that she will be one day merely by virtue of moving there.
Flavia has been mildly annoyed with me of late because I’ve been telling your grandchildren tales of the wild west, cowboys and Indians and outlaws, stories cribbed mostly from the moving pictures, since the real ones are mostly unsuitable for children. They don’t know the difference, in fact I’m sure they prefer the made-up ones. Sometimes I take out my old Dragoon to show them; one day last week I even took out the LABETTE CO. SHERIFF’S DEPUTY badge—I long ago, you’ll be glad to learn, got rid of the patch of blood-stiffened muslin it had been pinned to—and told them it had been my own. I imagine its original owner was gnashing his teeth in Hades at my lies, proud as he was of that hunk of tin.
The children lost interest in me and my stories quickly enough, though (as they tend to do), and went outside to play at gangsters, a far more salubrious and amusing game than cowboys and Indians in my view.
Write soon.
Affectionately yours,
Father
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The town of Cottonwood is a figment of my imagination, and I hope the real towns of Independence, Cherryvale, and Oswego, Kansas, will forgive my assigning bits and pieces of their histories to my fictional one. The characters herein are all fictional as well, with six notable exceptions: the Bender family, Mrs. Almira Griffith, and Mrs. Eliza Davis, whose actual lives were even more depraved and appalling than those presented here.
Readers interested in the true story of the Bender killings would do well to seek out The Benders of Kansas by John T. James (available from the publisher, Mostly Books, 111 East Sixth Street, Pittsburg, Kansas 66762). Written by the defense attorney who represented Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Griffith, this is by far the best account of the crimes I have found in print. I am grateful to Roger O’Connor, publisher of The Benders of Kansas and the man who knows more about the case than anyone else living, for his insights into the story. He is at work on a book about the case that promises to be the definitive account, and I anxiously await its release. (Another noteworthy version of the story still available is Fern Morrow Wood’s The Benders: Keepers of the Devil’s Inn, which comes to a very different conclusion—an interesting one though I disagree with it—regarding the identities of the two women.)
I am also indebted to the staff of the W.A. Rankin Memorial Library in Neodesha, Kansas; to Sally Hocker and the staff of the Spencer Research Library; and to the staff of the Kansas State Historical Society.
For research into photographic technologies of the nineteenth century I owe thanks to Rob McHenry, and to David Starkman and Susan Pinsky of www.reel3d.com. Rick Lasarow, M.D., checked the manuscript for medical accuracy and patiently answered my foolish questions, and Tim Moore helped me understand elements of early Kansas law. Kerri Kowal answered my questions about human decomposition, and her husband, Erik Kowal, helped me with my queries into the Danish language. Though the central character in this book is a classics scholar, I am not, and so I am particularly grateful to Timothy Engels for his help in constructing Bill’s Latin and Greek bibliographies. My brother-in-law Richard Monroe also helped out in the area of Latin grammar, and once again my friend and German translator Karl-Heinz Ebnet ensured that the German in the book was correct and appropriate to time and place.
Special thanks are also due to my editors, Dan Smetanka, Maria Rejt, and Joe Blades. Clair Lamb caught any number of inconsistencies and mistakes, and Charles Fischer, David Masiel, Terrill Lee Lankford, and Tod Goldberg all provided useful comments early on. Sylvie Rabineau, Abner Stein, Paul Marsh, and Dennis McMillan all have my gratitude, as of course does my friend and agent, the redoubtable Nicole Aragi, the best in the business. . . .
SCOTT PHILLIPS is the national bestselling author of The Walkaway and The Ice Harvest, which was a finalist for the Hammett Prize, the Edgar Award, and the Anthony Award. He was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas, and lived for many years in France. He now lives with his wife and daughter in St. Louis, Missouri.
Visit the author’s website at www.scottphillipsauthor.com.
Cottonwood is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the productions of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
2005 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition
Copyright © 2004 by Scott Phillips
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN : 978-0-307-41482-3
Ballantine Books website address: www.ballantinebooks.com
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