by Gini Koch
“Too many!” he shouted, kicking at a box of costumes. “The man offends any and all he comes into contact with. There’s nothing special about the methods used to vandalize his property, and our perpetrator had every chance available to get to the wagon unobserved. There are too many options!”
“Perpetrator? Not buying the ‘gang of ruffians’ tale the Professor’s layin’ out?”
“No more than you are.” Crash opened our door and let out a piercing whistle. “Mr. Mars, Mr. Cubitt, and Mr. Slaney. Could you join me in here, please?”
In short order the three crunched across the lot from Mrs. Hudson’s stall and stopped at the foot of our rickety staircase.
“Diamond” Joe Cubitt—a roustabout dark as sackcloth but soft as an angel’s feathers—patted his bald head then thumbed his suspenders. With a voice straight out of the lowest octaves of Heaven, he asked. “You need something, Boss?”
“Yes, gents,” Crash said amiably. “Come in. All of you, please.”
Mars and Cubitt eyed one another warily. Individually, they were broad as oxen. Yoke them with Mr. Slaney, the carousel operator, and the three could haul a train car.
“You sure, Boss?”
“Yes, of course, come on.” He then turned to me and handed me a poster from the floor and a bit of the spirit gum he used to hold on his wigs. “Here, Dandy. Hang this on the wall there.”
One at a time, the lads took the stairs and squished through the narrow doorway. By the time all three of them stood in the wagon, we couldn’t shut the door behind them, so tight were the quarters. The wagon sagged and the floorboards groaned with the additional weight. The closeness was awkward as the simplest act of breathing meant that one man’s body would expand to fill the crannies between him and his neighbor.
Crash, standing at the center of the room, dug into his pockets and fished out a stick of chalk. Then, making no attempts to mind the comfort of his cohorts, he squatted down. I couldn’t see him through the bodies, but I heard the sound of the chalk scratching the floor.
“Now, Mr. Mars,” Haus said cheerfully, eyes to the floor, “when did you and Artemesia intend to wed?”
The great lummox looked as though he wanted to scratch his beard, but he couldn’t lift a thick arm to do so. “Oh, well, with the New Year coming up, we’d thought maybe it would be a fine way to celebrate.”
“Dandy, the poster!” he reminded me.
I jerked, butting up against Slaney. “Right.” I turned slowly, jostling Slaney and Mars in the process. Back to them all, I tried to raise my arms, but found it harder than expected.
Crash went on. “That’s two days. Think you’ll both be ready by then?”
I adjusted, trying to tear off a piece of the tack with my teeth, but ended up elbowing Slaney in the face. The paper fell to the ground and I had no clearance to pick it back up again. The space was just too confining. I squirmed around to face the lads again, murmuring an apology to Slaney.
“Oh, yes.” Mars beamed.
His face flushed, and I wasn’t sure if it was from excitement or the fact that the heat in the ill-sized wagon had shot up severely. Sweat beaded on Diamond Joe’s pate like a string of pearls. I felt moisture pooling at the small of my back.
“Right, then,” Crash proclaimed. “Slaney, can you and Diamond Joe see to the proper set up of the carousel in the clearing just behind the camp?”
Slaney nodded.
“It’ll take some time to dig out the storage shed doors, but we should be able to start building tomorrow. Assuming that suits,” Diamond Joe added with a glance to Mars.
“Aye,” Mars muttered.
Crash tried to clap his hands, but ended up thudding against the strongman’s thighs. He sprang up from his position and nearly clocked his head against Diamond Joe’s chin. “Fantastic. Gents, I’m glad we talked. Go on about your day and we’ll discuss the nuptials a tad later. I’ve some business to tend to.”
The three extricated themselves and cool air whipped in through the open door. I let out a breath and dabbed at my moist brow.
“Couldn’t’ve said all that with them outside?” I asked, tossing him the spirit gum.
“Couldn’t have proven my point if I’d done that.”
“What point is that precisely?”
Crash smiled smug as a cat and pointed to the floor. He’d drawn a small circle and scrawled the barely legible words, “Not A Gang,” on the boards.
“You,” he said, “couldn’t hang a poster. Far less vigorous and demanding a task as ruthlessly carving a series of menacing stick figures into the wall. And this”—he indicated the circle—“was all the space I had to work with without drawing on our friends’ feet.”
“You picked the three biggest sods on the lot,” I countered. “What if the professor’s ruffians are smaller? More average?”
“Like us, for example?”
“For example.”
Crash scratched the back of his neck and shut the door. “I will concede that there were perhaps two men who violated the sanctity of the Professor’s home, but no more. If—as he supposes—Maeve was in residence, that would mean three people were in the wagon at the time of the attack. Three people scrambling about—two in a frenzy, the third in fear for her safety. Any more than that and the ordeal becomes cramped beyond plausibility.”
“And the horse?”
Haus lolled his head up so as to consult the ceiling, but squeezed his eyes shut. “Damn, the horse! It would take more than one person to subdue an animal large enough to lead the Professor’s wagon.”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. “Precisely.”
“But!” he shouted, staring at me with wide, feral eyes. “These attacks were separate. While linked by the sigils used, each one escalates. Paint on the outside led to breaking in to carve out the symbols within the Professor’s home, which led to killing his horse. The attacks increase in severity and complexity.”
“Which might account for needing more muscle to carry them out,” I offered.
“Precisely,” he whispered. “But we’re still left with any number of variables. Identities. Motives.”
“And the meaning behind the symbols themselves.”
Crash began dismantling the order of the shelves, clattering about as he searched for something. “About that, Dandy. You said you thought they might be hobo signs?”
He found what he was looking for: a stubby pencil and a fistful of blank paper. Once more he squatted, brought the papers to his knobby knee and began scribbling.
“The roadmen have a language that’s similar enough in style,” I said. “Stick figures, simple meanings. And they leave ’em on any flat surface with whatever might be at hand. If someone living rough took offense to the Professor—”
“Not entirely outside the realm of reality.”
“—then he might’ve seen fit to leave messages on his person.”
“Do you think you can find someone in your personal network that would know this language?”
“Suppose I could. Or there might be someone down at the boarding house in town. I can’t imagine too many of the roadmen wanting to be out in the thick of a winter this rough.”
“Excellent.” He sprang to his feet and stuffed the papers in my pocket. Swatting me on the shoulder, he said, “Get down there and see what you can find.”
I took a look at the papers. He’d jotted down, from memory, the sigils carved into the Professor’s abode. “Me?”
“Who better for the job?”
“Now?”
“The sooner this is resolved, the sooner that sorry excuse for a human being is off my lot. Yes. Now.”
“And just what are you going to do while I’m hoofin’ it into town?”
Sparing me very little of his attention, Crash studied himself in the small shaving mirror over the bunk. “Someone needs to talk to Maeve. And I’ll be damned if she’s going to sleep one more night on that bastard’s floor.”
I gazed up to the
small, rarely-disturbed box above the stove. The one in which he’d stashed the letter from his niece.
“Remind you of Moira?”
“More than somewhat, Dandy.”
I nodded. There wasn’t much more to say, so I got to the doing that needed done. I grabbed my coat and bundled myself up, hat pulled low and scarf wound tight. Cane in hand, I began the trek into town to see a man about a dead horse.
six
YOU WANT TO find a hobo, the best place to go looking is near the railway. I followed the tracks into town and saw nary a soul on my walk. Of course, that just meant that everyone else in Miami County was a damn sight saner and smarter than me.
I saw some hint of road folk, but only by their language. Symbols painted on, or carved into the rail signs. Nothing that matched the marks on the Professor’s wagon, but obviously meant to be seen and understood. A picture of a train. A series of circles with arrows coming off of them. A circle with a slash through it. And one that bore some strong resemblance to a duck.
When I hit the first signs of Peru, Indiana, I left the track in favor of Wabash Road. Soon enough, Patrick’s Boarding House came into view. Fact of the matter was, you couldn’t miss the thing if you were a blind man. The seat of hospitality sported bright green wood slats and orange shutters. The eaves were bright blue, and the door an unfortunate shade of red most often reserved for certain dens of impropriety.
A crude drawing of a cat had been drawn in the snow, and carved discreetly into the wood of the porch.
I beat the sludge off my boots with a few blows of my cane. As is the way with frozen limbs, my remaining foot complained as if I’d stabbed the thing with a hundred tiny needles. I hobbled up the stairs, then wiped my feet on the worn mat.
The door flew open before I’d had the chance to knock.
The woman standing there was a wisp of a thing, with withered brown skin that hung from her bones like leather. Her iron-grey hair was pulled back into a tight bun, though bits of it tried mightily to escape. She eyed me with a fierce curiosity.
“Well, son?” she croaked.
I took off my cap. “Ma’am, I do apologize for troubling you, but I was hoping I could buy a cup of coffee and rest a bit before I get back on the road.”
She nodded. “You won’t be needing a bed?”
“No, ma’am.”
“And you’ve got money, you say?”
“I’ve got a few aces.”
She yanked the door wide and warmth swam out of the house. “Get your damn fool ass in here now, boy. You look half-frozen and I’ll have no one dying on my doorstep on account of this terrible cold.”
“Much obliged,” I said with a smile.
I stepped inside and chafed my hands as she shut the door behind me. The inside of the boarding house was no less unique than the exterior. The proprietress appeared to have a particular fondness for doilies and anything with the slightest hint of a pink rose on it. The ewer on the sideboard, a framed picture on the wall, curtains and table cloths; all of them were decorated with floral sprays of varying severity. The armchair in the adjacent parlor was striped blue silk while the walls were papered with a dusty red damask.
“I’m Elise Patrick,” she said, her words clipped. The lady smoothed her apron before whisking past me and leading me through the hall. “But that’s Miss Patrick to you. There is no Mr. Patrick. There never was and never will be. I will not accept disrespect in this house. You treat me the way you’d treat your favorite auntie and no worse, and you can stay as long as you need.”
We turned a corner into a gleaming white kitchen. A pot was on the boil, presumably for the evening’s meal. A man twice the height of Miss Patrick—and at least twice her bulk—stood chopping tubers.
“Julius,” Miss Patrick called, “this one needs some joe and a bit of that broth in him before I’ll turn him back out into this weather.”
The man looked up and I saw he had the face of a soot-stained cherub, little more than an overgrown boy. Julius nodded fervently. “Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Patrick crooked her finger at me and led me into the dining room. She pulled out a wooden chair and pointed to its seat. “Sit you down, boy. Get off that leg before it becomes a problem.”
You don’t argue with a scowl like that woman wore. I put my better end in the chair tout suite. She gave me a firm, approving pat on the shoulder and set to putting cream, sugar and a small plate of cookies on the table.
“Now what’s your name, son, and what brings you this way?”
“Jim Walker.” I put a cookie in my mouth so I could think of what to tell Miss Patrick. Though the Wonder Show tried its best to keep good with the townfolk, and Peru was no stranger to rovers like ourselves, I never knew how one would react to housing a carny, something I’d become in a matter of months.
Julius came along just in time with a cup of coffee and a piping hot bowl of broth—chicken, by the smell of it. He only stayed long enough put down his wares before returning to the kitchen and his potatoes.
“Thank you,” I said, wrapping my cold hands around the mug of coffee.
Miss Patrick leaned in closer to me and sniffed the air. I caught a whiff of my own funk—reefer and the odor of having walked a few miles with one leg. Her plum-colored lips pursed disapprovingly.
“What are you about, Mr. Walker?” she asked.
“Ma’am?”
“You ain’t local, but you’ve got no bags. You’re too clean to be a railman, but you smell like the Devil’s sweat.”
I swallowed a mouthful of coffee and let it stoke my insides to warmth. Perhaps truth would be best. Some of it, anyway. “I take up with the Soggiorno Brothers’ show that’s made camp about five miles east of this very table.”
Her smile was wry, revealing a gap in her yellow teeth. “A circus boy, eh? You gonna juggle for your supper, Mr. Walker?”
I shook my head. “No, ma’am. I don’t perform, I just help on the lot.”
“What’s a job like that pay a man?”
“Three dollars a week and ever-changing scenery.” I stretched out my prosthetic leg and massaged the ache in my thigh. As I thawed out, the pain began to seep into my muscles something fierce.
She heard the metallic joints clatter, Miss Patrick, and looked down. Her face showed the slightest panic, so I tugged up on the fabric of my pants to let her see that she needn’t fear the metal rod that served as my tibia.
She fixed me with her watery eyes and seemed to stare into my mind. Her withered lips trembled. “The war?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Patrick nodded solemnly. “And you walked all the way here from that circus camp?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She swatted me on the head as she passed by into the kitchen. “Damn fool boy, you need a sandwich now, too.”
AFTER SETTING WATCH on me until I’d eaten as much as man can hold, Miss Elise Patrick refused to take my money. I’d held the coins out to her, but she put a hand over mine and pushed it back to my chest.
“You done paid for your meal, soldier.”
I nodded my gratitude and pocketed the cash. Miss Patrick sat down beside me. “Now tell me, Mr. Walker, what brings a gentleman like you here on a day like today?”
Reaching into my coat, I produced the papers Crash had scribbled on and laid them on the table. “I need someone who can tell me what these are.”
Miss Patrick retrieved a pair of spectacles from her apron pocket and looked down her nose at the drawings. “Look like something Flapjack would write on the wall.”
“Flapjack?”
“One of my regulars. When he’s road-weary, Flapjack comes back this way and stays—no longer than a fortnight, y’ understand. But he draws things like this. Messages to other tramps and bindle stiffs like him.”
“Do you know what they say?”
She shook her head. “They’re not meant for me to read.”
Disappointed, I stuffed the papers back in my coat.
&nbs
p; “Don’t look so glum, soldier. Flapjack’s in residence. I’m sure he could help a fella out.”
My smile turned to a wince as I stood up. “Lead on, Miss Patrick.”
The lady of the house made her way up a set of old, creaking stairs. Pictures lined the walls, some photographs gone yellow and faded. As if it was a script she couldn’t help but repeat, Miss Patrick said, “We have five rooms upstairs—that’s five beds for payin’ folk. Julius and I quarter in the attic. Each room has its own bed, linens and light. There’s a radio in the parlor downstairs, and a bathroom at the end of the hall. A man staying here will make use of the bath before bedding down or I will have Julius take the hose to him. I’ll not have my sheets spoilt.”
“You run a tight but accommodating ship, ma’am.”
She knocked on the third door on the left and called to the room’s occupant. “Mr. Hilton? Flapjack, are you decent?”
A rumble answered.
“Mr. Hilton, I’ve a man out here that could greatly use your knowledge of the roads.”
The lock clicked and the door swung open. A shaggy head poked out into the hall. “Alright.”
Miss Patrick smiled. “Flapjack, this here is Mr. Walker. Be good to him. Oh, and when you’ve a mind to it, wash up and come down for some vittles.”
Bleary as a bear woken in January, Flapjack Hilton waved a paw at Miss Patrick’s retreating form. Shuffling back into his room, he grumbled, “Come on.”
I followed him in and found the room precisely as advertised. A bed; a small dresser with fresh linens and a lamp atop it. In comparison to the rest of the house, the room was remarkably plain. Cream walls and soft, blue blankets. Flapjack’s luggage—consisting of a large leather bag like the one Crash used for mail carrying—rested on the floor next to a pair of boots. A jacket hung on the hook on the wall.
Flapjack pulled back the heavy curtains and daylight poured in. He was a stooped fellow, his shoulders arched with a neck that jutted out, suspending his head perilously in the open air. He wore a stained undershirt, trousers, and a pair of socks that desperately needed darning.
