Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

by Daniel Hecht

  I asked Rev. Wallace for clarification of this point: How does God know which sinners to admit to Heaven, and which to banish to Hell? For it has long confused me, and I have struggled with it in my own conscience: Ought I to forgive Margaret? Can I forgive Percy, for example, or the men who beat that husband and wife in the street? I am not certain I can; but if I could, could not God? If I did, but God did not, would God consider me a sinner—for forgiving? Or is all forgiveness His instrument, put into our weak hands?

  For Rev. Wallace, the answer to how God knows whom to bless and whom to banish was easily come by: "Why, those who have accepted Him into their hearts! Even a murderer, if he repents of his misdeeds, reads the Word, and accepts the Lord as his master, will be judged kindly. And even a lesser sinner, if he does not, must suffer damnation. That is why we are here, Sister Lydia, is it not? To preserve the multitudes from damnation by bringing them the Word that will save them?"

  Sister Gertrude and Rev. Smith and the others watched me warily, as if they sensed I would debate this point, and I could not help doing so, not out of contrariety but in honest puzzlement or curiosity.

  "But what of the Celestials?" I asked, for they were much on my mind; and I thought, too, of my sister, and of the wolf-man, who must be innocent of scripture but might be capable of kindness. "And other sorts of heathen, lacking good teaching? Would a Celestial who does not know of Christ, who has never read the Bible, yet has lived a virtuous and gentle life, be harshly judged? Through no fault except the land of his birth or the language of his parents—and those being God's own determinations?"

  "The Lord will make Himself known to them in His time. It is not ours to understand the ways of His will or His judgments."

  "Because," I went on urgently, heedless of the signals of danger, "would that not be a cruelty, to create a child with his destiny in Hell foreordained? We do know the Lord asks kindness of us, do we not? I cannot believe Jesus intended his injunction to kindness as . . . as merely bait on a hook, to draw people with our little mercies so that they will swallow the Bible! It seems to me that we are here as instruments of His mercy, in the here and now. If we are kind, isn't it simply the Lord being kind through our actions? Could not that be the sum of it—that He is using our hands to help render His intent on Earth, now, today?"

  Another time, his glare would have melted me on the spot. But strangely, the trials of my last weeks must have fortified me in some way, for I endured his fierce gaze and barely flinched.

  Still, I was glad that Deacon Skinner interceded for me. "Sister Lydia has raised an important point, I think. Whether in the end it is Virtue or Belief we should really strive for, and whether God might not already and continuously work His judgments and mercies through the little, daily works of our hands."

  Rev. Wallace brought the hot blue bolt of his gaze to bear on Deacon Skinner then, which the deacon returned with neither defiance nor undue humility. After a moment, Rev. Wallace turned to the others and told them drily, "Sister Lydia is a gentle and inquiring spirit. But one might suggest she leave such complex questions to men of religious authority and content herself with those same little, daily works. Which would not tax her so and for which a woman is, after all, so much better suited."

  I was suitably chastened, and remembered that at this juncture, of all times, I must not stand out or give anyone cause to doubt me. As if to drive the point home, the bell tinkled a moment later, and I looked up to see what I feared most, a dapper figure in a striped suit and bowler hat standing in the doorway. For an instant I did actually go into a faint, collapsing briefly against Sister Gertrude.

  But it was not Percy. It was only a salesman, with a kit of kitchen wares he hoped the mission might want. We declined and sent him on his way, but afterward I was overcome with nausea and had to lie down for a time. I knew I could not wait any longer, but must go to Margaret again, whatever may happen and whatever I might learn.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1889

  No, it is after midnight, so it is Friday morning. Once again I am sleepless and writing by lamplight. I have been to Margaret's at last. I have learned some dreadful facts. All the world is changed, yet I cannot name the nature of the change.

  After my terrible fright at the mission, I was resolved to go to her. I could not bear to passively wait for Percy's machinations to come to me, but would learn what I could and act from whatever knowledge I gained. So tonight I had Darby drive me to the warehouse, then made my way to Margaret's brothel by the winding ways I know so well. In a little, I passed the scene of Monday's violence, and found that the broken storefront windows were now boarded over. A tidy sign hung against the boards, For Lease, and below it someone had crudely painted in large, dripping letters, WITE ONLY. I wondered what had become of those unfortunate people, and passed quickly over the street there as if it were haunted ground.

  I came into the dim downstairs room to find only two women waiting: a busy night, I guessed from the noises of rhythmic exertion and drunken laughter from the rooms upstairs. I started toward the stairs, but the two whores roused at the sight of me and the older stopped me with a hiss and a shake of her big head. She was the hugely fat woman I had noted often before, with massive breasts and belly, each thigh big as the belly of a sow, arms like dimpled pillows, a great broad face like a kindly toad.

  "Not here," she said.

  "Where, then?"

  She glanced quickly toward the door at the back, where the madame or whoremaster would no doubt soon appear. "Gone and won't ever be back. And you should, too, before you bring more bad luck."

  "Where did she go? What do you mean?"

  The other was a slender girl with a sallow olive complexion, protruding front teeth above a weak chin, wearing nothing but drawers and a loose shawl. "Gone wherever bad girls go," she said in a high voice, "and no one the wiser."

  "It was you caused it all," the fat one said. Her eyes were tiny and porcine yet oddly intelligent above the mounds of her cheeks. "With Percy Oh, she had black around her eyes that night he saw you here, I can tell you. She wasn't kissing the Johnnies with lips cracked like that, neither."

  "Are you saying he beat her?"

  "Sure, he beat her! But this time it was to make her tell about you. And then a week later he come back in the middle of the night to raise holy hell. I was sitting right on this chair, and he stomps in with his face stained red, eyes all pouring, in a rage. He goes up the stairs and starts in on her for a while. Then it goes quiet. And half an hour later down she comes, all dressed and carrying her Gladstone, says nothing to no one and out she goes. And never come back."

  I could hardly speak. I stammered out, "But what of Percy?"

  "Still upstairs. With her fine sewing scissors in his neck and laying snow white in a bathtub's worth of blood. And my first thought seein' him was, God love you, Mag, good for you! But after the police carted him away, it was me and Tildy had to mop it up so's the room could be used again quick. And that was not such a delight."

  "Do the police have her?"

  "Naw!" the slender one said.

  "How do you know?"

  The fat one explained: "They been poppin' in every day or two ever since, askin' after her and runnin' quick through the rooms. And we tell them, Forget it, ain't this the last place she'd ever be found again?"

  "And who're they lookin' for, anyway?" the thin one screeched. "A girl named Mag, hair on top, two legs on the bottom, and a dollar twat between 'em! And how many are there fit that description in our town, Mag?" For the fat one's name was also Margaret. The scrawny girl thought it a great joke and slapped her bony knee in amusement.

  The fat one only gazed at me somberly as if she could see my soul plummeting. "I know what it's about," she whispered. "With the walls so thin. I know what she done for you."

  The slender one had misinterpreted. "What was it? Because I can do it in her place. I don't care, men or women, it's all the same to me."

  "Hssst! It's her sister, you idiot!" the
fat one said, turning on her angrily, and the other's eyes grew round as if I were some astonishing thing appeared in their midst.

  Then the front door opened and two sailors came in, young boys and very shy. Simultaneously, the whoremaster appeared in the back room, an evil man and always suspicious of me, and not wanting to confront him I fled into the night.

  And so I am free of Percy but without a sister again. Tonight I am sure my heart will burst from the feelings that overfill it. To know my sister has not only whored but murdered. To know it was to protect me that she killed him, and with the scissors I had given her! To wonder who saved whom and how so, to wonder who is to blame and who has sinned and who needs or should receive forgiveness: What is sin and what judgements should follow seems now even more confused and uncertain.

  I feel the hollow that comes from not knowing where she is, for as hard as our encounters were she was forever my sister and, in momentary flashes and glints, my friend. I wonder if I will ever see her again and what becomes of such a woman, when she tumbles deeper into the bottomless murk and shadows. Where can she possibly go?

  I am astonished at the world, appalled at it. One mercy given, one taken, and I cannot understand the purpose of it. I look for God's hand and know it is there but cannot decipher its intent. I barely heard Darby's good-night as I dismounted from the carriage. I stood in front of our dear fine house, which was all dark but for the one light Hans leaves for me. I did not know what to make of any of it.

  All my thoughts were confused but for this: What a clear, crystalline night, how vast the sky, how great the celestial distances, how very bright and piercing are the stars above our hill!

  40

  SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1889

  YESTERDAY I COULD not bear to go to the mission, being simply too overcome. I arranged a substitute, then stayed at home and tended to small things. I spent some time in the garden, which bestowed a bit of serenity; it is as if the green things and elegant colorful shapes emit an aura or radiance unseen by the eye (though the eye is much pleased as well) but beneficial to the spirit.

  My mind will not rest from thinking of ways I might search for Margaret, but none strike me as likely to succeed. Besides, she is sought by the police, and unless she stays hidden might well be apprehended, prosecuted, and hanged. My chest contracts painfully when I imagine her out there, in a world hostile and degrading in every way, with danger from every quarter, not even a whore's security of a brothel. In this she is barely better off than the wolf-man, though she is a fully formed human woman.

  With Percy's death, I have been relieved of the pressing need to reveal my sordid secrets to my husband. Yet I do not think I can continue without some revelation to him: I see now that even in the darkest depths of my fears, wrapped in the coils of uncertainty and every dire consideration, the thought of being truthful with Hans persisted as a clean, bright thing, sharp and frightening, yet welcome and needed. It would be a mercy to drop all pretense, and having imagined it so many times I now long for it, whatever difficulty it might entail.

  I must be a simple person, or perhaps there is some grain of truth in what Rev. Wallace said about a woman's design and limitations. For I could not imagine how to begin this process of unsavory revelation: what the first word would be, what tone of voice to use, in which moment of the day. Instead, yesterday evening after supper, when Hans had taken his place in his chair, I could think of nothing other than to go to him, to sit on his lap and bury my face in his hair and beard.

  I cannot quite say why I did this. I certainly felt an instinct to take comfort from the close company of another human being, but it was not a simple impulse. The doubts Percy had raised in my mind were still with me, about whether I might ever feel Hans's strength turned against me, and I still feared him. Thus I came to Hans also to be near the source of that fear: to study it and learn if it was a real thing, to surrender to it and so to challenge it.

  Hans said nothing, and I think he was quite startled. I sat and smelled him, the sweat of his skin and the wool of his suit with its ever-present whiff of brick and stone. I felt his muscles through his shirt and the abrasion against my forehead where his beard turns so wiry just beneath his ear. I had neither thoughts nor intent; I was too weary and world worn. Hans put his great hands around my waist, still speechless.

  Later, I still could not think but only let that inner wind move me where it would. Hans took his Friday bath, which delights him as much for the comforts of hot water and cleanliness as for the time spent among the bright marble and smooth enamel and gleaming fixtures; he takes pleasure in working the faucets and operating all the devices. I waited until the water stopped and I heard his great sigh as he eased into the tub, then went into the room with him. Again, it was not from decisiveness or confidence I did so, only that numb submission to my several weeks' ordeal and the need to be near him. He was somewhat alarmed at my intrusion, but I gazed at him frankly.

  Without his clothes, he is more majestic, a great perfect animal in the natural fullness of his frame and musculature. In his physical aspect, I found him indeed a fearful being, capable of anything, good or ill; but with every shape and proportion so ideally squared with its needed function and every part in purposeful harmony with the other. I thought: Surely, this is Adam's shape precisely as God wanted him; surely God does love the animal of him as He does the man.

  For a gentleman of forty-seven, he retains an exceptional youthfulness of physique. This is not entirely surprising, given the many years he labored; and to this day he will off his jacket and show some strapping youngster how to carry the hod, or hoist a timber, or lift and lever a cornerstone square of granite. He claims he does this only when one of his men is showing a want of application, to stimulate his resolve; but I know it satisfies Hans to apply his great strength and to exercise those familiar skills. And it certainly does not hurt his authority among his crews, who may chafe at his discipline but admire his strength and his willingness to take a laborer's role again.

  His face asked a question, and of course I could not say that I was wanting to know my love and my fear, that I could not bear any further uncertainty and would rather die of a certain fact than live any longer in the absence of one.

  I told him, "I have come to scrub my husband's back."

  This is not an intimacy we are accustomed to. His expression remained puzzled, but he made no refusal as I took up the cloth and soap and sat on the back of the tub. I lifted the hair off his neck and tugged it around to one side, then pushed him to lean forward. His back is a great shield-shaped landscape of rounded hills and soft valleys, with a forest of small curls trailing down his neck and dwindling to nothing between his shoulder blades. I wet the cloth and rubbed the soap, then applied the lather to him. My hands followed every curve and outline, traced every knob of his spine, explored beneath his arms, stroked the great wing muscles along his sides, went up the stout tapering pillar of his neck. At every moment I expected him to show doubt or resistance, but he did not; nor did I hurry or allow myself shame in my savor of him. When I had scrubbed and stroked far more than any back could need, I tugged him back to wash his hair and beard. When I was finished, I laid his hair snug behind his ears so that he looked fiercely handsome and dashing. Then I reached over his shoulders and applied the same attention to his chest and belly, another landscape of wonderful particulars. His manhood thickened and half rose against his thigh, but he made no effort to conceal himself; for the first time I looked directly upon it in the full light, freely indulging my curiosity. It struck me as a marvelous ugly thing, and I would have bathed him there also had I dared.

  Looking back at what I have just written, I can scarcely believe my daring and shamelessness. Is this a newfound strength or some strange weakness of character manifesting itself? The former, I have to think: The trials of the last weeks have confounded my former certainties and thus distilled them. When all is in doubt and in danger, one has no recourse but to the deepest reservoirs of chara
cter and belief. In my case, they are not thoughts so much as the simple impulses that have stayed steady when all else is in transition, and must therefore be the bedrock of my nature.

  I had not begun with any intent, or even desire, except that unthinking wish to linger near my husband and to trace his body with my hands as if his shape alone would answer my questions. But after his bathing was done, and I had dried him and he stood pink and humid, desire had kindled in both of us. And as we went into the bedroom, I suddenly knew how it should go: Tonight I will freely admit the pleasure he gives me; tomorrow I will ask him to accompany me on my walk down the hill to the cable car, and he will see how I do that. He will accept these things of me or he will not. By degrees we will both learn whom we have married. And we will make a certainty, be it a good one or a sorry one.

  41

  TUESDAY,JULY 2, 1 8 89

  IT IS EARLY morning and I am in the dim pantry, scribbling fast as there is so much to recount. I have seen the wolf-man again, under very different and tragic circumstances.

  Yesterday early evening, Monday, Dr. Mahoney came to the mission all disheveled and whiskey-breathed, in a great state of excitement. He lifted his cap to show me his freckled pate and whispered urgently that he wanted to speak with me in confidence. We took ourselves to the front porch, where he explained in a hushed voice: He had heard from one of his patients that a werewolf is now on display at a saloon called The Red Man. My heart sank at the name, for we at the mission know The Red Man all too well as a cesspit of unspeakable depravity and excess, operated by a ruthless, Godless man named Silas Singer. Dr. Mahoney showed me a crude handbill which advertised the "werewolf" as a "blood-drunk murderer, devourer of babes" and gave times when for a fee he might be viewed in his cage or fighting dogs and men.